Tag Archives: change

New Year’s Eve 2025

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I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more New Year’s Eve loses its luster. It feels less like a party and more like a bedtime challenge. Can I make it to midnight? Can I even make it past 9:30? I think William Vaughn said it best, “Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.”

For the record, I stopped trying for midnight years ago, especially with a worship service in the morning. Still, the moment has never been lost on me. New Year’s Eve—the day itself—has always been a moment to pause. It can be sort of a held breath between what was and what will be, if only we’ll take the opportunity to consider it. Right now, I’m sitting at my dining room table. Even with a quick glance around the room, I’m reminded of just how quickly things can change.

For example, right across from where I’m sitting, a poster-sized photo hangs on the wall. Jennifer snapped the picture. Essentially, she captured a moment we can never revisit.

The photo was taken on a beautiful, sun-washed day at a beachside restaurant near Lemon Bay, Florida—one we visited with some relatively newfound friends at the time who knew the place and loved it. In the image, there’s a wooden post planted in the sand with forty or so signs nailed to it, each pointing somewhere else—cities across the United States, and a few beyond its borders, all measured in miles from that very spot. A bird is perched on one of the top signs, palled by a nearby palm tree’s shadow. It’s as if the bird’s deciding which of the cities he’ll choose to visit next. The sky is bright blue, interrupted only by a handful of clouds. Everything about the picture feels calm, steady, and permanent.

But permanence is a lie we tell ourselves when the sun is shining and things are easy. Hurricane Ian erased everything in that photo back in 2022. The sign, the restaurant, the familiar stretch of beach, it was all pretty much gone overnight. It was reduced to ocean-soaked debris and memory.

That said, I can promise you, the Thoma family loves the image all the more, if only because everything in it is gone. In a way, it’s not just a photograph for us anymore. It’s a reminder that certain moments don’t ask our permission before they become history. We will never stand there again. We will never see that post in the sand exactly as it was. We’ll never be able to visit that restaurant and relive that moment.

New Year’s Eve has a way of turning our attention toward that same kind of truth. We look back at the year behind us and realize how much of it has vanished without much ceremony. I think of my dear Christian friend, Alex Bak, who died just before Christmas. We had recent conversations together that I never suspected would be our last. Like the signs near the beachfront restaurant, I lived as though Alex would always be there. I just assumed I’d always see Alex sitting in his same pew near the post on the pulpit side of the church’s nave. Indeed, plenty of other things have happened all around me that felt ordinary at the time but now feel sacred because they’re gone.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that time moves forward with or without my consent. The clock ticks with absolute indifference to my nostalgia.

But I have an upper hand on the clock’s cruelty. As a Christian, I know Christ is present in every moment. “Behold,” He said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Everything we love in this world is fragile. I’ve been known to say from the pulpit from time to time that everything has an expiration date. Everything is subject to wind, water, decay, and time. But the thing is, Christ stands right in the middle of the storms. He’s a fixed anchor right in the middle of all our victories and losses. He’s unshaken and unchanging. He does not promise that the signposts will remain standing. He doesn’t promise that the forthcoming year and its moments will be gentle. But He does promise Himself. And with that promise comes the impenetrable truth of a kingdom that cannot be washed away, grasped by a hope-filled strength that does not weaken or erode.

So as 2025 becomes 2026, just as I won’t cling to the misapprehension that I can stay up until midnight, I won’t hold to the illusion that the coming year will somehow be free from struggle or loss. Time has cured me of that naiveté. There will be storms I didn’t see coming, moments I assumed would last that didn’t, and conversations I didn’t realize were final until they already were. But those potential realities are not hollow or hopeless when viewed through the lens of the Gospel. The calendar can change all it wants. Christ remains the same—yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

Indeed, the world may lose its landmarks. Favorite places and moments may disappear into the Gulf, maybe even becoming portraits on our dining room walls. But in the middle of all of it, the cross still stands, unmoved by this world’s winds and waves, untouched by time’s inevitable erosion. And that’s enough for me. I have everything I need in Jesus, which means I’ll have everything I need in 2026. My prayer is that He’ll be enough for you in the new year, too.

By the way, if your church doesn’t offer a New Year’s Eve service, stop by Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hartland, Michigan. Ours is at 4:30 pm. For the record, I’ve never met anyone who was disappointed they went to church on New Year’s Eve.

A Steady Voice

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Typically, by the time I’ve arrived at my office on Sunday morning, I already know what I want to write about. When I arrived this morning, I wasn’t sure. I thought I might scribble something about the wedding I preached at yesterday. But it only took a moment for something else to catch my attention, and if you’ll bear with me, you’ll understand why something so simple could be so important.

I’d only been in my office a few minutes when I heard a bird singing somewhere outside my window. Well, singing might not be the best description. It was calling out, and its voice was distinctly rhythmic. It made the same sounds in the same patterns for quite some time. Essentially, it made two longer calls followed by six shorter ones. Three or four seconds would go by before it repeated the pattern exactly.

It started as little more than background noise. Birds sing in the morning. And others were. Who cares? But then, it became more distinct among the other birds’ tunes. And because I know very little about birds, after a minute of focused listening, I went outside to find the one that had my attention.

There, on one of the tree branches not far from my office window, was a cardinal. I tried to get a little closer, but he stopped mid-song and flittered away.

I went back inside and did a quick Google search on cardinals and their reasons for singing. It turns out that cardinals typically sing in the morning, often well before the sun rises. Their chirping serves one of two purposes—either to attract a mate, which usually happens in the spring, or to announce their presence in their territory, sending a clear message to any rivals that they’ve staked an official claim on the space.

Now, as I tap away at my keyboard, I realize that seemingly small melody was far more than part of the landscape’s noise, random and of little interest to me. First, it was deliberately communicative, carrying a message of invitation or warning. As a preacher, that’s familiar to me. Second, even though more than a few birds were singing, the cardinal’s message remained steady and consistent. That’s familiar to me, too. Third, I suppose the cardinal wasn’t necessarily concerned with whether I, or anyone else, was actually listening. Still, it sang because it had a reason to sing, and it kept singing until its message had been delivered to the right audience. Again, something very familiar to me.

In one sense, I suspect all of this suddenly mattered to me because I just told someone on Friday that I sometimes feel like my words are little more than background noise being drowned out by the louder, flashier sounds of everyday life. I imagine many pastors feel that way. The culture shouts. Entertainment blares. So many things clamor for attention. When it comes to what pastors are to be, do, and deliver, temptations to compete with these things increase tenfold.

Maybe we should change worship styles to be more entertaining. Perhaps we should shorten the sermon, or at least deliver it in a way that seems more like a TED talk than preaching. Maybe we should thin out the Gospel a little, too, so that it’s less offensive. I mean, preaching about a God who was crucified isn’t all that attractive. It just doesn’t seem to compete with the world’s message of success. In fact, maybe we should avoid speaking about sin while we’re at it. Preaching repentance can get somewhat uncomfortable. Perhaps we should first focus on attracting the crowd. We should trade theological depth in doctrine and practice for a less demanding piety. Even better, maybe we shouldn’t be so creedal, so strict with our boundaries. The culture will never accept us if our expectations are too rigid—if we require the culture to assimilate into us rather than the other way around. The same goes for consistency. Everyone knows that flexibility and innovation and newness are the ways to keep people interested.

But then there’s the cardinal. He simply is what God has made him to be.

The cardinal doesn’t change his tune depending on who’s listening. He doesn’t speed it up to keep up with the noise around him. He doesn’t change his pattern. He sings of warning and invitation, sin and grace, Law and Gospel. He sings the song he’s meant to sing, over and over again. It’s as if he does it without concern for the results—as if he’d been sitting on a tree branch listening when the Lord said, “He who has ears to hear let him hear” (Matthew 11:15).

In the same way, the truth a pastor speaks—whether in the pulpit, in a counseling session, across the table with someone at lunch, or before this world’s kings—doesn’t have to out-shout the chaos (1 Corinthians 2:1–2). This morning, the cardinal was a reminder that consistency definitely matters more than volume (Galatians 6:9). The call that seems ignored in one moment may be heard by exactly the right ears later.

In the end, my calling as a pastor—and in a sense, yours as a Christian parent, friend, co-worker, or neighbor—is to be clear, steady, and faithful to God’s Word. We may feel small or irrelevant, but our task is not to dominate the air. It’s to fill it with the sounds—His Word—trusting that He will make sure the right ears hear it at the right time. Interestingly, some will receive the words as invitation. Others will hear them as warning. But either way, the message will reach its hearers and cut through the noise (Hebrews 4:12). How could it not? The Gospel is the most potent message there is. That’s because it isn’t just words. It’s the means by which the Holy Spirit works to convert and convince the human heart and instill faith (Romans 1:16, 1 Corinthians 2:4–5, Romans 10:17). Unlike all other messages, its delivery is actual presence, and its truth marks very real territory.

To close, I suppose I’ll simply say that while the world may shift its tune a hundred times over, the Gospel never changes (Galatians 1:8–9, Hebrews 13:8)—and neither should the voices that carry it. Sing it in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2), in joy and in hardship (Philippians 4:12–13), in full confidence that the Lord who gave you the song will see to it that, in His time, it will be heard (Isaiah 55:11).