The Best is Yet to Come!

This year has arguably been the most challenging year of my life. Many of you have a similar testimony. We have, in the words of the hymn writer, come through many dangers, toils, and snares from national insecurity to personal struggles. Life has surely had its way with us as the Death Angel worked overtime.

It would be easy to cling to the challenge as we enter into the new year. It would be easy to let the residue of despair blanket the new year. It would be easy to go into the new year with low expectations as the ceiling of possibility, especially given the state of our nation and world. And while all of that would be easy, it would certainly not exemplify our most holy faith in a God who has plans for us filled with hope and a future. Succumbing to the ease of clinging to challenge would also be counterproductive and self-sabotaging, assuring that 2025 was simply a repeat of 2024. And I can’t speak for anyone else, but I certainly do not want a repeat of 2024.

So instead of being marked by the challenging past, choosing the easy route of low expectations, I am choosing to enter the new year guided by the sagacious poetry of Sonya Sanchez. In one of her most notable haiku, Sanchez wrote:

What is done is done.

What is not done is not done.

Let it go… like the wind.

I invite you to join me in this endeavor. Over the next couple of days, before the clock strikes midnight on January 1st, make time and space to sit in quiet reflection with God. Consider all that you did and said, and the impact it may have had on you and others. Consider what was left undone and unsaid, and the impact it may have had on you and others. Reach out for reconciliation If necessary and possible, and then, take all of it, what was done and what was not done, and let the wind of God, the Holy Spirit, carry it away so that you can begin the new year with a clean slate and a fresh start because, beloveds, the best Is yet to come!

Growing in Christ

Pastor Donna Olivia Owusu-Ansah