Starting in June 2020, I began looking forward to New Year’s Eve.
When New Year’s Eve finally arrived, our family anxiously waited for the ball to drop—or rather, leisurely descend—from Times Square. Typically, this moment is disappointingly dull; there have even been a few occasions when we’ve watched a previous New Year’s celebration on YouTube, so that we could head to bed a little earlier. (Sorry to my kids; we really did this).
But this year, we spent the final few hours of 2020 playing games as a family, keeping our eye on the clock, and counting down with ecstatic television hosts. When the ball finally landed, we hooted and hollered. Our neighbor set off fireworks. The community celebrated.
We had made it through 2020!
In so many ways, 2020 was a terribly difficult year. We were more than ready to turn the page, hoping the worst was behind us. And maybe it was the impossibly high expectations, but the opening weeks of 2021 have not gone as we had hoped.
Just because the calendar turned, COVID-19 didn’t disappear, racism didn’t call it quits, conflicts weren’t resolved. There are signs of hope, but already, 2021 has included all-new highs in COVID cases, a Confederate flag waving in the Capitol, and climbing global poverty rates.
Perhaps there is a small part of us that blindly hoped we would wake up in January to drop our kids off at school and head to work with no masks in sight … that we would embrace our friends and families without the need for social distance … that we would live without fear of pandemics, the downturn of economies, or political and social unrest.
Idealism can leave optimists feeling empty. How do we keep serving during stages of disappointment and disillusionment?
Perhaps part of the solution is to celebrate another way that this new year hasn’t changed. In the unchanging chaos of our world, there is something—Someone—who hasn’t changed: our Savior, Emmanuel. While I am hopeful there will be significant progress and improvements in the days and months to come, we also know that this year will include plenty of new challenges and disappointments. Better to place our confidence in the God who was with us last year and is with us today—the One who is still bringing redemption and restoration to a world that desperately needs it. And that is the unshakable Hope we hold onto in this new year.
