Starting the New Year with God at My Side

Do you embrace the new year with a sense of exuberance, with the promise of a fresh start as the calendar flips to January?

Or do you approach the new year with trepidation, wondering if it can possibly be any worse than the last?

How you respond is shaped by multiple factors. Your attitude. Your perspective. Your current life situation. And more. If things are going well, you likely feel optimistic about 2019. If you are dealing with challenges, you likely don’t feel quite so positive. And that’s OK. No matter old year or new, going well or not so much, God is there for you. Wow. How great is that?

In Psalm 121:7-8, the writer declares: The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

We can’t always count on friends or family or even ourselves. But we can count on God. Always. 

When I ponder that statement, I consider God’s accessibility. He’s there 24/7 to hear our prayers. I appreciate his on-call availability to listen to my pleas, my worries, my repentance, my thanksgiving. I bet God would tell you, though, that he hears way more requests for help from me than thanks. I need to work on that, to be more grateful. That he continues to listen and act (in his time and way, not mine), is remarkable really. He could easily say, “She’s used all her life-lines. She’s on her own.” And then disappear.

But I see evidence of God everywhere. When I read and hear his word, he connects with me. Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10) reassures me when I’m feeling anything but calm and sure. 

I see God in my faith family, in the friends who encourage, uplift and pray for me. There’s that word again—prayer. Strong and powerful. I take great comfort in knowing others are praying for me and that God hears those, and my, prayers. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours (Mark 11:24).

Through the challenges of life I’ve felt God’s steady presence. Not that I haven’t doubted. I have. But, even in the dark depths of winter, he doesn’t abandon me (and other Minnesotans) by moving to Arizona. God stays right beside me through every storm, even during a late April blizzard that kept me from my granddaughter’s second birthday party. Sometimes I just have to laugh at God’s sense of humor.

Going into 2019, I find myself awaiting the birth of a second grandchild in January. I find myself, too, hoping I don’t fall and break a bone for the third year in a row. I don’t want to spend another summer going to medical and physical therapy appointments. God’s doing a good job of teaching me patience, humility and empathy.

I approach the new year with joy and with hesitation. None of us knows what the next 12 months will bring. But we have the absolute certainty that God will be there for us—listening, comforting, strengthening, uplifting, directing, encouraging...  Even knowing that, will we still struggle? Probably. 

But we can trust God to work hope in our hearts, to help us see the positives in the negatives, to carry us through the joys and the challenges of the new year. No matter what comes our way.

Audrey Kletscher Helbling writes from her cozy home office in southern Minnesota, where winters seem much longer now than during her childhood on a farm 120 miles to the west.