We always hope that a new year will bring better things than the one that has just gone! But what about this coming year of 2024? In spite of all the predictions around the place, no-one knows for sure everything that will happen in this coming year! From a view of the nations around the world, life seems pretty uncertain for a lot of people, and yet this is exactly what the Bible predicts will happen. Nation will rise against nation, until the end of time. No matter how much the leaders think they have the answers, unless they take God and His laws into consideration, things will remain in uncertainty for this year as well.

    There is talk of AI and other new things that are being invented all the time, things that our grand-parents, and even our parents, never dreamed of! In the life time of older folk still alive today, just think of how things how evolved in that time!  From the days of horse and cart on the farm, then to tractors to move things, and then today the size and speed of farm machinery is mind boggling.

      Think of how in other spheres, technology has made such great strides, and even now it is not slowing down. Think for example, of how warfare is changing all the time, and when the idea of an underground network of tunnels contributes to modern warfare, it is mind boggling! Even the very idea of destroying a country only to take over the rubble that has been created doesn’t make sense.

   Without taking God into the equation, there is no hope of an everlasting peace left for this world. But those who have put their trust in Him have an everlasting hope, a certainty and knowledge, that all will come right in the end. While mankind refuses to acknowledge God, and just relies on their own  wisdom, things will never improve.

    So how can we have hope in this year of 2024?  Keep looking upwards, and not at what is going on around us. That is not to say to shut our eyes to the current events, but to realise that God has all things in His control. Yes, He could simply wipe out all these evil men who are doing these atrocities, but we must remember, that He has given each person a free will to choose to do right, or choose to do wrong. If we choose to do wrong, then we have to bear the consequences, but the trouble is, that it always affects other people.

So let us take heart, and look up to the One in Whom is all goodness and righteousness. Then for us, there will be a New Year of Hope!