“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” –Isaiah 43:2
I don’t recall a turning of the year when I have said, “good riddance” to the year that was. But this year, I am officially glad that 2024 is almost finished. The seasons in the last one third of 2024 were challenging ones for the Franklin Reformed congregation. Aging, illness, loss, and death were all part and parcel of what was on our collective “plates” since August.
I am hopeful that the year to come, as we try to remember to write 2025, will bring us some relief from these burdens that we have carried over the last five months. I look to God to bring us some sense of the future of our church community. I pray that we who are aging will learn to be gentle with ourselves and our aging bodies. I hope that treatment of sickness will bring relief. I long to see a day where we can concentrate on ministry and mission, rather than financial issues.
Related: Christ Calls Us Out of “the Way It’s Supposed to Be” and Into New Life
None of us can know what the new year will bring, and I think that’s a good thing. It will do us no earthly good to worry about what we see in our personal and collective futures. Ecclesiastes reminds us that all time is in God’s hands. The writer reminds us, after telling us that everything has its own season, “I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this so that all should stand in awe before him” (Ecclesiastes 3:14).
Since we cannot know what lies ahead of us, personally and collectively, what is there that will carry us through both the joys and difficulties that we will encounter in the months of the year of our Lord, 2025?
I often turn to the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the confessional foundations of the Reformed Church in America. The catechism was written, in part, by Zacharius Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus and approved by the Synod in 1563. This document written to teach the theology of the Reformed tradition, was an educational tool. Up through the 1960’s those in “confirmation” classes were required to memorize the catechism in part or in total.
The catechism is divided into three distinct parts: guilt, grace, and gratitude, or alternatively sin, salvation, and service. But it is always the first question and answer that rings in my head and heart. The question: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” The answer: “That I am not my own but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”
Related: Why the Heidelberg Catechism is Still Relevant, in Life and in Death
So, no matter what this year holds for us, we can be sure that we do not celebrate or sorrow without God, in Jesus, accompanying us along the way. And that can be our comfort as we stand in the doorway of this new year.
This reflection was originally published in Franklin Reformed Church’s January newsletter. It has been adapted and reposted with permission.
Rev. Jill C. Fenske
Rev. Jill C. Fenske has been the pastor with the congregation of the Franklin Reformed Church in Nutley, New Jersey, since 1991. Jill is currently enrolled at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in the DMin program in Pastoral Care and Counseling. Her favorite hours in her week are Bible Study and Adult Christian Education, where she learns with others the beauty and treasures of the biblical narrative.
