Six Keys to 2023
Steve Brown Download: Audio
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Scripture 1 Corinthians 16:13 – 14
Keep alert; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.
Looking to Sunday
by Elaine Poproski
I was thinking about the new year, and the song that came into my head was the great Feeling Good, made famous back in 1965 by Nina Simone. You may recognize the chorus:
It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
It’s a new life
For me
And I’m feelin’ good.
The song doesn’t have anything to do with the new year. It’s a celebration of freedom and liberation from oppression. It’s been covered by countless artists, but in my opinion (based on nothing more than personal preference and an incomplete survey of all the covers), Nina Simone’s is the best version available. You can’t help but feel good when the song plays. And when I think about the new year, I hope this song can be our anthem.
It’s a funny thing about a new year: even though we know it’s just a day in a calendar, somehow there’s hope attached to it. Even though COVID isn’t gone, and other respiratory illnesses are endangering countless lives while our health care system falls apart around us, even though Russia continues its heartless assault of Ukraine, even though millions around the world continue to be displaced, even though our city continues to host thousands of insecurely housed and unhoused people, a new year feels hopeful.
The thing about hope, though, is that if we don’t do anything with it, it quickly deteriorates into wishful thinking. If a new year is going to be better than the old year, it won’t happen by accident or by magic; it’ll happen because we make it happen.
On Sunday we’ll be hearing from Steve Brown, our guest preacher while I’m on holidays this week. Steve comes to us from Arrow Leadership and will be sharing with us 6 Keys to 2023. These keys, as we consider how to incorporate them into our lives moving forward, should help keep us hopeful.
As you prepare for Sunday, perhaps spend some time considering what you’d like to carry into the new year and what you’d like to leave behind. Perhaps spend some time with God, asking him to reveal what he’d have you carry forward and what he’d have you leave behind.