After coming through the Christmas season, we stand today on the verge of a new year. In many homes Christmas decorations are coming down, and Christmas parties are over. Perhaps, like me, you are thinking of the year ahead, imagining and dreaming what God may have in store for you. As we look ahead to the new year and new seasons ahead, we also do well to look back at what God has done for us.

Many years after Jesus had brought salvation by dying to pay for our sin and rising to new life for our sake, the apostle John wrote about his own experience as a follower of Christ. We can picture John looking back on what had happened to him when he first encountered Jesus. “The life appeared,” says John, and his words express the wonder and amazement he experienced when the Word of life came to him one day and changed his life (see Luke 5:1-11).

Though we have not encountered Jesus in the same way his first disciples, like John, did, we still have an amazing story to tell. We have fellowship with the Father because Jesus, God’s Son, has come to make him known. Through faith in Jesus, we experience forgiveness of sin and new life, restoring our relationship with God.

Christmas brings us joy for what God has done and offers hope for what lies ahead. May your life, today and in the coming year, be filled with the joy of knowing Christ the Savior.