New Year’s Day – January 1st, 2025
Trinity Ev. Lutheran Church, Block, Kansas
Rev. Joshua Woelmer
Text: Psalm 90; Isaiah 61:2
“A New Year of God’s Grace”
Theme: New Year’s Day is an opportunity for thanksgiving to God for another year past, for reflection on one’s own life, and a time to wonder what God has in store for us in the coming year.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Counting time is a finicky thing. We take so much for granted living in the Year of Our Lord 2025. For one, we take for granted that we’re all on the same calendar. In reality, there are six primary calendars in use around the world. These are the Gregorian, Jewish, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Julian calendars. For the record, we use the Julian calendar. Some are solar (Julian), some are lunar (Gregorian), some are luni-solar (Jewish, Indian, Chinese).
We also take for granted a dating that is separate from world events. Most of the Bible, for example, counts time by rulers and their reigns. For example, the Bible dates the beginning of Solomon building the temple to his fourth year of his reign (1 Kings 6:1). Luke 3 dates the beginning of John the Baptist’s preaching in this way: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (1–2). That is a lot of historical tracking. We should thank God for a monk called Dionysius Exiguus who standardized the calendar around the year believed to be the birth of Jesus Christ, which then became AD 1. AD stands for “In the Year of Our Lord.” Although he was off by a few years, he did the best he could, and we’re not going to add three years to make up for his error.
It is great that we have a continuous calendar, and that this year is not the fourth year of the reign of Biden. The next year will not be the first year of the second reign of Donald Trump. Adding one year upon another allows us to reflect on the fact that all of time is in God’s hands, that it is centered on the person of Jesus, and that we can use it to reflect on our own lives.
New Year’s Day is an opportunity for thanksgiving to God for another year past, for reflection on one’s own life, and a time to wonder what God has in store for us in the coming year.
Let us first look at the past year. Has it been a great year for you? A good year? Just so-so? Or has it been the worst year of your life? You may have conflicted feelings about the last year. Some things may have gone well, some things not at all. If we are honest with ourselves, there is probably a mix of good and bad.
In this way, a new year is an appropriate time to take measure of what has happened. It is the year end to many financial books, when businesses are counting up what they have earned this year, or where they may be in the red. Today can be a similar sort of “year’s end” for our spiritual books as well. What have we done that we would like to continue because we see that good has been coming from it? What are some sins that we would like done away with in our lives because they are holding us back? What are some problems that we need to hand over to God in prayer because they are not in our ability to fix?
As we look at the past, we must find solace in the mercy and grace of God. We recognize that while we may have done some good, our lives have not been spotless. Nor have we been as productive as we could have been in good works. Nonetheless, our God forgives us according to his steadfast love. Psalm 25:7 says this to us: “Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!” If bad memories of your guilt flood your mind, turn your mind from them to knowledge of a gracious and merciful God who sent His Son to die for you. God has been our dwelling place throughout all generations.
The present is another good time to reflect on your life right now. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray that God would give us daily our daily bread. There is an emphasis on receiving from the Lord’s hand each day what he has to give us. We can certainly pray that tomorrow we would receive tomorrow’s bread. But tomorrow is not today, and God would direct our eyes to what he is doing today for us. Thank him for the food that is before you.
The present is also a time to serve others. It is good to look around at your family and friends and see how you can be a blessing to them, whether in great or small ways. In all we do, the end of Psalm 90 can be our prayer: “Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” (16–17). We have work to do in our families, community, and church, and we ought to pray that God would establish and smile upon this work.
Finally, New Year’s is a good time to look into the future. And yet, we do so with faith that it is ultimately in God’s hands. None of us knows what God has in store for us or our nation. If you want a bit of humility, read some of the wisdom literature, like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or James. I came across this from James 4, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” (13–15). If the Lord wills, indeed. All of our future we place at the Lord’s will, and we pray, “Thy will be done.”
God also shapes us now for the future though. Psalm 90 says this: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (12). This comes after a section in Psalm 90 that says, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty” (10). It is good to consider your age and how many more years God will probably give you. Where are you in life right now? What does God give to the youth, to those in adulthood, to the aged? Number your days means to reflect on what God may have in store for you in the next few years or decades. It’s a call for wisdom, to see the good and bad ahead of you because you interact with others who are going through it right now. It’s a call for humility before God, because as he gives you some things, he takes others away. It’s a call for trust in God, because there will come a day when he will call you to be with him. That day we cannot number, but God has.
So as we go forward into the new year, it is good as Isaiah says, to “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (61:2). This year of the Lord’s favor came when Jesus walked on this earth, but it is certainly true every time we turn the calendar to a new year. For this year is still a year of the Lord, Anno Domini. It is a year under his grace, his mercy. Our God has not changed, but in the past, present, and future, his grace for you covers all your sins, past present, and future. For all that we praise and thank him.
Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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