The new year is here: 2021! I don’t know about you, but I am more than ready to see 2020 in my rearview mirror. This is not to say that this past year has not been without its blessings. After all, I began my tenure here at Harmony Grove this past year and I count that as one of my biggest blessings. You are a wonderful church filled with special people in whose midst I feel I am coming into my own as a pastor: a great blessing indeed! My wife also started her new job at Oak Grove this past year, which she loves tremendously, and in July we moved into its beautiful parsonage, which has provided an outlet for my love of creating interesting spaces. Our children have remained healthy and done well in school—Joe at Georgia State and Ellie at Georgia Tech. It has been a year of many blessings! But it has also been a year over which the cloud of a pandemic hung that has forced us all to restrict our social and personal lives in significant ways and required us to become even more mindful that we are in this together and must protect one another, even when it restricts our personal rights. Many people have died, including some of our loved ones. It has been a hard, difficult, challenging, and sad year; more for some than others. But the new year, 2021, is here! We believe in a God who is the creator of the heavens and the earth. Our God is not stuck in the past, but has eyes focused on the future—a God who enjoys doing new and beautiful things. Are you ready for something new and beautiful? Let us turn to the future and explore what God has in store for us. May it be a year of special blessings for us all!
Isaiah 42:9: See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.