Hope for 2021
How great is today?! A new year! A fresh page! I feel a sense of excitement and anticipation about what will be written on this new page! This new year! This new day!
A date is just a date… and yet we give it so much meaning, heck, I’m all for new…
New hour
New day
New experiences
New relationships
New adventures
and yes, even a New Year!
There’s something that happens when the calendar flicks over… and yet deep down isn’t it really just like any other new day?
The sun still sets and rises – does the sun know that it’s a new year or does it see new opportunities at the turn of each day, not knowing or giving any power to the calendar date?
I wonder how it’d feel if we took the pressure off?… especially the pressure off of 2021!
I feel like there is a lot of pressure on 2021 being great. better. Better at least than 2020, which let’s be honest, most of us would say that wouldn’t be hard to beat.
I wonder how differently we would live our 2021 if we took the pressure off and saw each day as a new opportunity? A new day? To set new goals? To see new hope? To embrace it for what it is?
Would it change your view of 2021?
Maybe the pressure for 2021 to be way better than 2020 is helpful for you.
Pressure and newness are interesting concepts.
Sometimes the newness gives us new hope and yet we can have that hope each day. Thanks to God for that. Imagine if we had to wait for another 365 days before we could have hope again, when the calendar clicks over to 1st Jan 2022. I’m glad we can have new hope each day, each hour, each minute and each moment.
And then there’s pressure.
For some, pressure helps to get stuff done. Some people work better under pressure – maybe with a time pressure – but I’m not convinced any one’s heart and emotions work better under pressure to perform, to be better, so that… I don’t know… So that…
You get a pay rise
You get married
You have kids
You buy the house
You win the contract
Your kids don’t fight
God will love you more
Others will love you more…
That’s a lot of pressure… a lot of pressure to put on a year and let’s face it, we’re not actually putting that pressure on 2021 itself, are we?
We are putting that pressure on ourselves, our loved ones, our colleagues, our neighbours in 2021.
As the calendar has clicked over into 2021, let’s look for hope in each day – not in the year as a whole (for if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we don’t know what will happen from day to day), but instead in each day, each hour, each minute and each moment. As we find hope in each moment, we will get to the end of 2021 and see all the times we saw and experienced hope.
If 2021 comes with great anticipation and expectation, let’s hold those expectations loosely and instead, let’s see 2021 as the year to see each day for what it brings, and the hope we can find in each moment.
Happy New Year!
