This week always feels like an odd one to me. Christmas Day has been and gone, and New Year’s Day is not yet here. The busyness and preparation have all paid off, and now there is a pause, a period of in between. For me, it’s a time of reflection. Reflecting on the year that has been: the triumphs and the hardships, the memories made and the lessons learned. And also beginning to look ahead – to hopes, goals, and expectations for the year to come.
It’s in this reflective space that I ask God for a word for the year ahead. It’s a practice I’ve found deeply helpful. Each time, a word or phrase comes, and as the year unfolds I gradually realise just how apt it is, usually in ways I could never have anticipated. This time last year, the word God gave me was Jubilee.
For me, 2025 has been an interesting and exciting year. It hasn’t been an easy one; there have been plenty of frustrations and tears along the way. And yet, it has been a year that has deepened my faith. This year – seven years after initially being told I wasn’t ready – I was accepted to train for ordination. A calling I had all but given up on was given back to me.
This year also required me to acknowledge some deep, inner pain caused by a couple of people from my past. I had to name it, sit with it, and ultimately let it go. Forgiveness is not some sentimental ideal we aspire to; it is a biblical calling, and it is hard! But it is also necessary if we are to keep growing and moving forwards. Resentment and bitterness become chains; forgiveness, however costly, sets us free.
It has also been a year of endings and beginnings. Of leaving the comfortable and familiar to step into something new, exciting, and slightly daunting. That has meant geographical distance from good friends and familiar places, alongside the gift of meeting new people and forming new friendships.
Looking back now, this is what Jubilee has meant for me. Not fireworks or grand celebrations, but renewal, restoration, and the quiet cancellation of debts. It’s not what I expected when God first gave me that word a year ago. And yet, as I sit and reflect, it feels exactly right for what God has been doing in and through my life.
Because that is the heart of it. None of this happened because I worked hard enough to make it happen. I didn’t earn any of it – not the triumphs, and not the challenges either. This has been about God’s timing. The uncomfortable struggle with forgiveness came when I had the people around me to help me face it. The journey to ordination training came when my trust in God mattered more to me than the outcome; when my eyes were fixed on God, not on myself.
So 2025 has been a Jubilee year for me, not because everything was easy, but because God has been faithful. Faithful in restoring, faithful in challenging, faithful in teaching me to trust. I step into the year ahead without all the answers, but with a deeper confidence in the One who calls, restores, and leads in his own time. And that, I am slowly learning, is what Jubilee really looks like.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
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