Right now we are being inundated with advertising trying to sell us the secret to everything from weight loss, relationships, meditation, time management, and happiness itself. Marketers know that people often feel stuck in old habits and are looking for help in the new year. But what if we have it backwards. What if we need to look backwards and inwards before we look forward and reach outwards for help?
Covid has scattered the local church.
The initial need to socially distance and stay safely at home in our jammies to watch worship services online has had far-reaching implications, many of which have not been positive.
Not regularly gathering together for worship made it easy for members to disconnect from their church community, get used to not being part of corporate worship, passively listen online and even stop listening at all. Eventually this led to many people feeling out of the loop with what is happening within their own church, to stop attending entirely and to get spiritually lazy. Others responded by “trying out” different churches and leaving the church communities they once considered family. These things have weakened our churches as a whole.
Even if staying up until midnight isn’t your cup of tea, it seems that recently especially, ushering in a new year has been therapeutic for many. No, our lives don’t magically change when the calendars do, but there is something cathartic about a fresh start. Some people have wonderful things to look forward to in 2022 like growing their family, starting a new job, finishing school, etc., while others just wish to end 2021 because it was hard. Either way, if you’re looking to have a fresh start in 2022, Here are some ideas on how to usher in a new year.
I feel like a broken record, but when Covid-19 impacted our world last March, I wasn’t prepared to still be talking about it almost a year later. At least the first several months of 2021 will be touched by safety measures, vaccinations, and other things that have become a “new normal”. What if we looked for hard-won treasures in a hard-lived year that we could adopt as part of our new normal?
As I write this, it’s a mere few days after Christmas and I’m already seeing it: the post-Christmas blues. Instagram posts of Christmas decor abound with captions already lamenting the day it will have to be put away. Some are sad for the kids to have to go back to school (though I suspect some are not).
In January 2016, my whole life shifted. I had just graduated college, accepted a job in “the Big City”, and was coming out of a season of sin. After my parents helped me settle into my new apartment and I hugged them goodbye, I sat alone in my new place. The unfamiliar sound of heavy traffic and uncomfortably close neighbors failed to drown out the wrestling within my mind.
