This Is How to Start the Year 2025 Out Right

Here we are at the brink of brand new, bringing hopeful resolutions and thought-through words of the year. And we want to start this year out right, as we haven’t quite ever before.

This year will be different, we pledge, though we remember similar promises and how they fell apart.

Maybe New Year’s Eve feels like a celebration of endings. We get to bury what didn’t do well or go right and start over. Plant fresh seeds and forget the ones that never grew.

I get it. It’s wearying caring for seeds that haven’t sprouted yet. And your heart just needs a break, your lungs a moment to breathe.

But here, on the cusp of all a fresh new year has to offer, I want to share what I’m clinging to for my own unsprouted seeds:

Some seeds take longer to germinate.

That’s the order of nature, to teach us Jesus’s nature as we witness the holy unfolding of a larger-than-us story.

A Good Plan

Leave it to One who turned the world right-side up to say that some seeds just aren’t ready yet. But don’t give up, He whispers. I’ve got a very good plan.

Trust Me if I tuck those seeds deep into ground long before they see light.

Trust Me if I reverse the order between planting and harvest.

Trust Me as you turn it back over to Me every time your fists begin to grasp for control.

It’s Mine to hold, not yours, and I’m holding you close too.

Lean in and see what I will do.

God is big enough to grow both brand new and tend what’s already planted. Strong enough to hold up all that feels like it’s caving in on you. Attentive enough to not miss one minute detail, tucking it into exactly the right place.

He’s the kind of God who makes much of all we let go, who trades frustration for sacred intimacy when we surrender, who reveals the great expanse of His heart as He joins us in the waiting.

God’s Heart

As we tip toe towards January, I remember the ache and grace in last year’s start. Endings and beginnings, at the same time. Tender questions (mine) and God’s compassion. A rapid journey through the whole Bible–and how I found God’s heart through themes I’d never noticed before.

Like how David aches so deeply for God that it often woke him in the middle of the night–because daytime hours were too few to fit in all the adoration and conversation.

Like how God shows up and people are instantly and utterly undone. Facedown. Speechless.

Like the way physical surrender changes the posture of the heart. The undeniable link between getting low and seeing God.

Like the way gratitude comes first–before, not after, God answers, intervenes, redeems.

Like the way God’s nature never changes. He’s the God of More Than Enough. The One Abundantly Able. He’s Fierce Tenderness and Refining Fire–drenched in compassion, overflowing with kindness, quick to sympathize, always leaning in to listen, treasuring our words, cherishing the sound of our voices.

I was struck with the glory-heavy gravity of God’s divinity. His searing holiness, seeping into our stories, bending our knees, rending our hearts. His gaze, dethroning our distractions and lesser loves, gifting us bold and undeserved access to Him.

Stay Tender

Throughout the year, we planted seeds, He and I together. He taught me to press them deep into readied soil and let them go. Let them go so they can grow as He says best.

It hasn’t looked how I expected–but I know Him better, trust Him more, for it.

So the other morning, as I was journaling through the SACRED way acronym in Ann Voskamp’s journal, Sacred Prayer, I paused at this question: “What’s God inviting me to do today, to make today a day of more amazing grace?”

I’d just admitted my fear in an earlier question–of feeling too much, caring too much, as I walked right back into a deja vu season.

And with His characteristic kindness, God whispered two words: stay tender.

As if He knew how deep ingrained that word tender already is in what I’m surrendering. As if He knew I needed a reminder to keep the heart wide open, because only then does He have unrestricted access to mine and tend, rearrange and redeem.

Empty Hands

What is it for you that would close off your heart, tell you it’s ok to choose numb so it hurts a little less? What unfinished work is God inviting you to embrace another year?

By all means, let’s make room for the new and beautiful things God has in store for 2025. But could we also hold space for the still-growing, not-yet-emerged seedlings of grace gifts already planted?

As Jennifer Dukes Lee says in her book, Growing Slow,

May you have the courage to grow slow. May you know that when you grow slow, you grow deep.

Stop waiting for someone to validate the things you are growing in those fields of yours. Someone already has.

Stop defining your goals by the success in someone else’s field. God knows exactly where you are supposed to be.

And may you never, ever forget for a single second that God enjoys watching you grow slow. He isn’t upset or disappointed that sanctification takes time.

Growing Slow, p. 221

It’s okay that not everything planted in 2024 grew fruit yet. Maybe some things are still growing roots.

It’s alright that your hands are empty. You might feel like you have nothing to show for 2024, but the seeds in the ground, emptied from your cupped hand, tell a different story.

A Prayer for the Year 2025

Let’s pray.

Jesus, here are our empty hands, held open, offered to You. You know what feels forgotten right now. Remind us that You were there for the planting, and You’re faithful now. We turn 2025 over to You. Grow us this year as You know best.

Just a friend over here in your corner,