Ah, a new year has started — and with it all the good intentions of new year’s resolutions. There is nothing more beautiful (and terrifying) than a new year stretching out in front of you.

In the words of Anne Shirley, “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” 2022 is here, and with it a chance to make it the best year you have ever lived for Christ.

Just sit back and relish that thought for a moment. There are no mistakes yet in this new year. We have the chance to make it the best we have ever lived.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to look back in ten years at 2022 and see a chapter in my life full of regrets. I don’t want to just live 2022 passively. I want to grow and bloom where God has me planted in this season of my life, because it will be gone in a heartbeat, unable to be changed.

I am grateful for the blessing to see another year — to take a breath in a new chapter of history. I am grateful to be able to take part in this coming year.

Looking over my shoulder at this past year, I really have to shake my head in amazement. It has been a crazy year for everyone (ok, let’s be real — a crazy past two years 😶), and it is easy to look ahead at the year that is stretching before us as a blank page in each of our lives, and wonder what it will hold.

Will it bring pain? Will it bring unexpected joy? These are questions that race through my mind.

I have been pondering a verse in Psalm 65. It says, “Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.”

Read that verse again. Isn’t it beautiful?

No matter what we face in this coming year, God is still good. If it doesn’t go the way we plan, God is still good.

Even if the year brings nothing but heartache and pain to our lives, the year is still crowned with God’s goodness.

When we stop seeing God’s goodness stamped all over our lives, it’s not because it isn’t there. It’s simply because we aren’t looking through eyes that will see it.

As we welcome this new year and say a bittersweet goodbye to 2021, let’s go forward for God with a passion for Him.

Let’s face the challenges of this new year with courage and faith.

Let’s make it the best year we have EVER lived for Christ.

A. M. Watson

Hebrews 13:8