As we start another year, we know very little about what it will hold. We wish each other a happy new year and hope for favourable circumstances. However, we really don’t know what will happen. Maybe natural disasters will affect us, political turmoil will disrupt our lives, or perhaps good fortune will rearrange our plans for the future.

In marriage, we vow to be together, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, because we don't know what life has for us. Marriage, like a new year, could turn out very different than we expect. We don’t know what challenges we may face, what sorrows and joys will be ours, but we commit to being together and hope for favourable circumstances.

As Christians though, our hope is not in favourable circumstances, but rather our hope is in Christ.

If we hope for better circumstances, our hope is in the fragility of this world, and we can become disillusioned when things don't work out the way we planned. But when we hope in Christ, our circumstances don't have to determine whether a year is good or not. Recently, I had an email from a friend who from the world's point of view had a bad year with ill health, but she felt it was a good year because she had grown in her spiritual understanding of God and his purposes.

As we start another new year, let's fix our eyes on Jesus, our hope in all circumstances.

Jesus poured out His blood for the New Covenant of grace and truth, replacing the Old Covenant letter of the law of Moses. Believers are exclusively under the New Covenant, the last will and testament of Jesus that began after the cross.