Starting well means ending well

A word for transition

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

It’s that time of year again, already! 2024 has certainly been an interesting year and I’m sure many of you will be hoping for better things in 2025.

Transitioning from one year to the next can be met with mixed feelings, and people deal with it in different ways. One very popular way is to make those annual New Year's resolutions! Many of these fall by the wayside within days, and others fizzle out as the year progresses. This may be because they didn’t really take them seriously in the first place, or it could be that they made rash choices and didn’t properly think them through. But I want to suggest it could also have to do with something else—two things, actually.

The first is whether we talked these things through with God or received wise counsel from trusted friends. The second is this—and this is what I want to focus on—we struggle to start the new year well because we didn’t take the time to end the previous year well. We can be in such a rush to end a year that we don’t actually deal with the baggage we collected along the way, and so we start the next year carrying too much from the previous year.

How we end one year will have a direct impact on how we begin the next one. And no matter what we do we will still carry something from one year into the next. The question is what that will be. The year has happened, history has taken place, and things are written that cannot be unwritten, so we have the experiences and testimonies that we will take with us into 2025.

So, how are you going to remember 2024?

It has certainly had its challenges. The world has seen many elections taking place, with almost half the population of those nations being unhappy with the outcome! Continued war in Europe and the Middle East, both of which seem a long way from ending. Weather disruption and destruction, especially impacting farming and food production. Undoubtedly there will be the experience of loss, whether that’s loved ones, businesses, jobs or homes. Not to mention the stresses of all these things. We could go on, but that would do us no good.

To finish the year simply focussed on the negative would not be ending the year well. What is there to celebrate? What good things happened this year? What testimonies do you have of your encounters with God or His interventions in your life?

We are too accustomed to ‘no news is good news’ and we’ve believed it. Most conversations seem to begin with being asked how you are. When things are not good we find it easy to talk at length about it, but if things are good then we struggle to say much beyond ‘yeah, good thanks’! We need to learn to turn this around - learn to talk more about what’s good and why, and learn to grumble and moan less. There’s plenty of Scripture to support this!

We don’t ignore the negative things but we must balance this with the positive things. Even if it’s simply thankfulness to have made it through the year with your life, health, home, job, family, God’s love, whatever reasons you can find to give thanks. Paul sums it up in Philippians 4:8; “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

2024 is a year filled with God; His love, His provision, His grace. Every day is a day that the Lord has made. That doesn’t mean He filled it with any of the negative things, it means every day has been an opportunity to encounter Him and walk with Him through whatever came with that day. He gives us hope in times when there seems to be no hope, strength when we have none, and perseverance when we can’t see any end in sight.

For all the challenges, difficulties, loss, disappointments, guilt—whatever has been negative—bring those things to God. Ask for healing, ask for forgiveness, ask for the strength to forgive others, to love those who have come against you. Whatever those things are, deal with them the best you can so that you’re not bringing them into your new year. Holding on to things means your hands are not free to grasp hold of the new things in the coming year.

Also, if we learn to give thanks even for the smallest of things this year, then we position ourselves better with how God would have us think about the year and how He has been present in it. Giving thanks for small things can open the door to greater things. And don’t feel guilty for the good things, knowing that others may not have such blessings or experiences.

To start the new year well means learning to end the year well. Only take into the new year the things God would have you take.

God bless you and help you to end this year well so that you can start next year well, and be free to take hold of all that the new year will bring.