When I was in primary school, I always liked the teacher giving me a new exercise book. It was an opportunity to make a fresh start and to try to write more carefully avoiding unsightly blots and crossing outs. As we start another new year it is new beginning for us all with new opportunities. But we may already be aware of some of the challenges 2025 will bring and be apprehensive about them.

The coming of Jesus into this world revealed that God is a personal God. There is only one God and there are three persons in the godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God the Father “so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” How good it is to know that our lives are not determined by impersonal, blind fate, but by the Lord who is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”

Some years ago, a young Christian couple who came to our church suffered a tragedy between Christmas and New Year. The husband was a self-employed hairdresser and was on his way to work on a frosty morning a few days after Christmas. His car hit some black ice, and he lost control of it and hit a tree. He was taken to hospital where, tragically, he died of his injuries. His wife was devastated by the sudden, unexpected loss of her beloved husband.

Early in the new year she had to plan the funeral and choose hymns which expressed her faith in Jesus as she faced the future without her husband. One of the songs she chose says, “I do not know what lies ahead, the way I cannot see; yet one stands near to be my guide; he’ll show the way to me. I do not know how many days of life are mine to spend; but one who knows and cares for me will keep me to the end. I do not know the course ahead; what joys and griefs are there; but one is near who fully knows; I’ll trust his loving care. I know who holds the future, and he’ll guide me with his hand. With God things don’t just happen; everything by him is planned. So, as I face tomorrow with its problems large and small, I’ll trust the God of miracles, give to him my all.” This song speaks to us as we face a New Year and need to know that there is One who will walk with us whatever it may bring.