Grace Chamberlain is wife to Graeme, mum to Thea, and pastor at Hillcrest Baptist Church in Hamilton.
I wonder if you’ve ever felt compelled to count down to midnight on New Year’s Eve or to set a New Year’s resolution? Or if late nights and resolutions aren’t quite your thing, maybe you’ve been known to choose a scripture passage or word for yourself to set the direction for the year to come. Perhaps New Year’s is a time when you take a quiet moment to reflect on who you were in the year that’s been and who you want to be in the year to come. Or maybe at some pointbefore the year really gets going, you like to spend some time planning ahead and diarising all the big events for the year.
There’s just something about New Year’s that demands our attention. At this time, we find ourselves in a space that is both reflective and anticipatory: It’s a hinge moment between what has been and what will be, a time when we look back, and we look forward. From our midnight countdowns to our new 2025 year planners, we feel drawn to mark this moment – to acknowledge the turning of the calendar and the passing of time.
Something about New Year’s draws us in. From the ancient wisdom of Celtic Christianity, I believe the concept of “thin spaces” might help us understand why this is the case. Behind the concept of “thin spaces” is an assumption that there are places and moments where the boundaries between physical and spiritual realities feel especially thin, and the presence of God is felt with a particularly profound awareness. In such spaces, we may find ourselves uttering words like those of Jacob in Genesis 28:16: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it” (NIV).
I wonder if intuitively we recognise something sacred about New Year’s – that in this hinge moment between the year that has been and the year that is dawning, we find ourselves in a temporal thin space, where we sense God’s nearness in a special way. We find in ourselves a special reflectiveness and openness which enable us to pay attention to God in a fuller way than usual.
In this sacred pause in which we find ourselves today, I invite you to ponder 1 Samuel 7:12 with me. In it, we hear the prophet Samuel setting up a memorial stone after a victory against the Philistines in which God showed up for His people in a powerful way. We’re told that Samuel named this memorial stone “Ebenezer” (which means “stone of help”), declaring, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”
In setting up this memorial stone and making his declaration about God’s help, Samuel presumably wanted the Israelites to remember the way God delivered them from the Philistines on that specific day and to give them a tangible cue – something physical that they could see and touch – which would prompt them to pause and recall God’s help. But rather than stating that God had helped them “on this day,” Samuel’s declaration was that God had helped them “thus far.”Through these words, this stone became a memorial not only of God’s help in one specific battle between the Israelites and Philistines but of every time God had helped His people. For us today, these words can be a reminder not only of how God helped His people (Israel) at that particular time and place but of all the countless ways God has helped His people (all who are now graciously included in God’s family) up until this very moment.
I believe that what we see in 1 Samuel 7:12 is a pattern for how to trust God in even the most difficult seasons. These words teach us to look back, prompting us to recall the ways God has helped before. They teach us to observe every promise God has kept and to pay attention to how God has been with us through every twist and turn of life thus far. As we look back, I believe we are also assured that because of all that God has done for us before, who God has shown himself to be, and all the ways he has proven to keep His promises, we can trust that God will continue to help us. We can envisage a hopeful future because the God who has helped us before will help us again.
While we cannot know how God will help, by learning to look back at what God has done in the past, we can learn to keep trusting that God will help. In this act of looking back in order to look forward, we practice what I like to call “thus far faith,” which is, in essence, simply faith that remembers that God has helped us before, and based on past experiences of God’s faithfulness, trusts that God will do it again. This expression of faith looks at the struggles and trials of life and says,
“Thus far, this is what I’ve seen of God...
Thus far, here are the ways God has been with me...
Thus far, these are the things God has taught me...
and so in light of all I have seen, heard, learned and experienced of God thus far, I will trust that God is with me now and will help me again.”
This is thus far faith: “God has helped us before; God will help us again.”
This call to look back and reflect on God’s faithfulness is echoed in the words of Charles Spurgeon, who powerfully exhorted his listeners in a sermon entitled Ebenezer:
How profitable an occupation to observe God's goodness in delivering David out of the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear; his mercy in passing by the transgression, iniquity, and sin of Manasseh; his faithfulness in keeping the covenant made with Abraham; or his interposition on the behalf of the dying Hezekiah. But, beloved, would it not be even more interesting and profitable for us to remark the hand of God in our own lives? Ought we not to look upon our own history as being at least as full of God, as full of his goodness and of his truth, as much a proof of his faithfulness and veracity as the lives of any of the saints who have gone before? I think we do our Lord an injustice when we suppose that he wrought all his mighty acts in days of yore, and showed himself strong for those in the early time, but doth not perform wonders or lay bare his arm for the saints that are now upon the earth. Let us review, I say, our own diaries.” (Charles Spurgeon, Ebenezer! March 15, 1863).
Let us review our own diaries. In them, we will discover that our God truly is a God who helps. In this thin space of New Years’ time, when we find ourselves especially reflective of the year that has been and hopeful for the year that is coming, I invite you to practice a “thus far” expression of faith by reviewing your own diary (physical or metaphorical). I invite you to take time to consider the ways that God has helped you before, to look back to see where God has had His hand on your life and circumstances. I invite you into the emboldened hope that comes from seeing the ways God has been with you thus far. And I invite you to look ahead and enter this year with confidence, knowing that whatever this year may bring, the God who has helped you before will help you again.
The thin space and sacred moment of New Year’s is the perfect moment to look back, to review our diaries, and to remember how God has helped us. Whatever is going on in your life right now, and whatever this year will throw at you, I pray that when you look back on your own story and history with God, you will be able to see His fingerprints everywhere, reminding you of His constant help, goodness, power and presence. In this time of New Year’s, this transition between what has been and what is coming, may we recall God’s help, sense His presence, rest in His promises, and step into the new year with faith and expectancy, knowing that the God who has helped us before will help us again.
Photo by George Zografidis: pexels.com/photo/man-in-black-t-shirt-looking-at-the-big-city-11945713/
