We have now entered 2025. I love the freshness of a new year, the way it can signal a new beginning and new hope. Sadly, yesterday in various places in the world including New Orleans in the USA there were acts of violence. For all of us, it can be a challenge to hold onto hope. This is true even more with the pain around us. But still the call of new beginnings beckons us. What is your new beginning in 2025?

Exactly forty years ago today I was living in Kolkata, India, leading a pioneering team there. I was in my third year in India. The time had not been easy for me. I faced challenges, especially with my health. I decided to start the new year with a two day prayer retreat at a guest house in the city. Those two days were life changing for me. During this retreat, I strengthened my commitment to loving Muslim people. This commitment had begun five years earlier before coming to India. This surprising new beginning to 1985 led to further steps later in the year. And all of it led the next year to me moving to Delhi with a team, and a new ministry expression to Muslims throughout Asia.

New beginnings in our lives can be surprising. Or they can be new ways to continue our current paths. Below is a poem I came across recently, by beloved writer John O’Donohue. I hope it blesses you at the beginning of this new year, like it blessed me. And may you have a new beginning, one that has been quietly forming and now is ready to emerge.

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with this seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped, onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Amen.