It’s 2026. My friend Steve didn’t make it out of 2024, after ALS took hold.
I lost some folks in 2025, too.
Looking back, from my dear friend Tony Little in 2017 all the way to just after high school back in the 1980s, when the first of my classmates passed unexpectedly, a lot of folks I’ve known aren’t here to see this new year.
It would seem to me that the vast majority of those folks didn’t know they wouldn’t see the end of the year in which they left us.
Steve, who decided heaven sounded preferable to a drawn-out, losing battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, knew.
His goal for 2024 kinda became saying his goodbyes and dying well… and he did so with aplomb.
What’s my point?
This is the year we’re in, and I don’t know what you have in mind, nor what’s actually in store for you, but I do know that we should think about what we’d prefer this year’s fruit to be in our lives.
At least thinking about it and knowing what we’re aiming for can help us try to align our focus well enough to assess how it’s going throughout the year.
If you’re worn out and need a year of leisure and rest, that works just fine as a goal.
If you’ve always felt led to start a business that’s been on the back burner, well, time’s ticking, isn’t it? Perhaps this year is a year of risk, entrepreneurial sacrifice and giving that dream a real effort.
I’ve known more than one person who simmered with a dream, but never burned with it, and time ran out.
For me, I have some personal growth goals, a couple of good novel manuscripts that haven’t found a publisher yet and the privilege of pouring into some younger people… all things I’ll focus on.
For Faithbridge Community Church, our theme this year is bringing the good news of salvation to our community with a passion for the hearts and souls God spoke of in John 3:16-17’s “For God so loved the world…”
So as a church, we’re focused on caring more and allowing God to strip away our biases and barriers so we can see folks through his eyes and respond with mercy and love in ways that honor his own.
What about you? Have you thought through what are 2026’s “big things” so you know how to make the big things the big things this year?
Again, if you’ve gone 1,000 mph after your career or your hobbies and feel led to focus more on your spouse, your kids, your grandkids… that’s a beautiful thing.
Put it on your fridge or your shaving mirror and check in routinely to make sure you’re on course.
You really can’t go wrong here. You decide and you even get to weigh the results per your scale, no one else’s.
But, if you’re here at the close of 2026 — and I hope you will be — you may be able to count it as more satisfying and fruitful because you took some time this week to give it some thought.
Here’s to a fruitful 2026…may God’s blessings shower down upon you.
For God so loved the world that He gave his son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His son to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. ~John 3:16-17
The Rev. James Hogan is a native of Stowe Township and serves as pastor of Faithbridge Community Church.
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