Others Magazine

Photo: Miguel Oros

By Commissioner Floyd Tidd

As young kids in the neighbourhood, we would plan for New Year’s Day, believing that the way we spent 1 January would set the pattern for the whole year.

Whatever we did on New Year’s Day, we would continue to do for the rest of the year. Now, with more than five decades of New Year’s Days under my belt, I admit that I am glad most years haven’t mirrored the first day of the year!

How many times have you heard or said, “Happy New Year”? In 2019, let’s anticipate more than a “happy new year” – immeasurably more! It is an appropriate time to glance back at the past year. It helps to understand where we are today and how we got here. In that glance, look for the hand of God, trace his ngerprints throughout the journey of the days with all they held.

So often, as we look back across the previous year, we see that the wishes for a “Happy New Year” didn’t materialise in every day. As we look back, however, with eyes of faith and hindsight, we see more than we could have imagined at the beginning of the year, to have been our experience.

walking in faith

As we look ahead, we choose to step boldly into the new opportunities and challenges that a new year will bring. Boldly because of a confident faith that “we can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps” (Proverbs 16:9 NLT). Regardless of what the first day of the year and the 364 days to follow may bring, we hold on to a hope that will not disappoint for “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts” (Romans 5:5).

We will step into our communities, open to the places of hardship and injustice, prepared to live, love and ght alongside others, sharing the love of Jesus. We know this new year before us is one in which God will continue to transform Australia one life at a time. As Salvos, we have the privilege of being partners with God in that work of transforming lives.

Could the “immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20) for the coming year include more than a “happy” new year for you? God’s work of transforming lives is an ongoing work – and not just for others.

It is my prayer that you will anticipate and embrace a new thing God has prepared to do in you and for you this coming year. You can expect more, so much more than a “Happy New Year”, for he “is able to do immeasurably more than you could ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within you” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step” – Martin Luther King Jnr.