I love fresh starts and new beginnings. There’s such hope for the new, the shiny, the untouched. Even Mondays, for me, feel like a new chance to get things right.

The last two years, though, the turn of the calendar brought no real hope. Looking to the future brought only pain. But this year, mingled with the emptiness that will never completely leave, there is a glimmer of hope. For what? I’m not really sure.

There are no big life transitions on the calendar. No graduations or weddings like 2025 held. No moves planned. No big trips to speak of. And yet, some sort of hope is here anyway.

Maybe it’s the unseasonably warm weather that has softened something in me. Or maybe it’s simply time. But I think it’s more than that.  Maybe it’s the hope that 2026 will hold more joy than pain. That I might notice beauty again without having to work so hard to see it. That somehow the tides of our storm will begin to turn and bring in fresh air and toss pretty shells of grace on the shore for me to find and treasure.

I’m not naïve enough to think that all my sorrow can vanish or remain tucked away for the most part a mere three years after loss. I’ll never forget, of course, and I don’t want to. But maybe one of life’s great mysteries is that sorrow can coexist with joy and maybe, in some strange way, each is better with the presence of the other.

Lord, bring continued hope this year. Let me see your compassion and goodness.
Make us glad according to the days in which you have afflicted us.
Let your beauty be upon us this year and establish the work of our hands, yes, establish the work of our hands.
Renew a steadfast Spirit within us, and do not cast us away from your presence.
And never, oh never, take your Holy Spirit from us.
Let it all be according to your steadfast love. Amen.

As I finished writing the above in my journal this morning, I cracked open my Morning and Evening for yet another round. It’s worn and the pages are falling out now. I’ve thought about getting a shiny new copy, but this one is well loved, underlined and highlighted with notes scattered throughout. I honestly don’t remember where I got it, but it looks like someone (maybe me) paid $1.25 for it, probably in the early 90s. In this case, the best things in life are almost free.

I opened up to January 1 and the Morning devotional was on Joshua 5:12:

“They did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.”

It seems that Joshua could have made a bigger deal out of this fact. Forty long years, the Israelites were waiting to taste the milk and honey promised them. And I guess, we could just read right over the verse but of course, Spurgeon helps bring it to life and make it applicable to both his 19^th century readers and us today.