2025! A new year is here.
For a little perspective: the original “Blade Runner” movie, produced in 1982, was set in 2019 Los Angeles. Things haven’t quite turned out like those images and settings portrayed, but someone must have thought that is where we would be.
We want to start by thanking all of you who support our platforms, like and share our posts and send us encouragement. As I thought and meditated on goals for 2025, I remembered our 2nd year anniversary celebration in mid-2024 where we asked contributors what it meant to be a living stone. Although there were different perspectives and insights, all agreed “to be” a participant in the process.
Every new year is a chance to reflect on the past and learn from our experiences. Resolutions are made, but when simplified, they all boil down to who, what, where, and how we want “to be” going into the following year. So with the new year upon us, I knew I had to ask myself that same question again: who is Tim Murphy going to be in 2025?
Here’s what I settled on.
Be Intentional
For me, this has never been about organization, keeping a calendar or developing a habit. Rather, it is taking steps to develop relationships. Learn and grow with purpose instead of waiting on people or circumstances. Taking the first step is usually the most difficult, but typically every step after gets a little easier.
Be Merciful
It really is true what they say: you never know what someone is walking through, dealing with or carrying. Rather than putting myself in someone else’s shoes, I will continue to remind myself that the pair God gave me are already difficult enough to fill. It’s better when interacting with others to just remember that I don’t know everything. Jesus would say that mercy should be our default anyhow.
Be Thankful
This is not comparing myself to others or understanding that “things could always be worse” (stay away from others’ shoes). It is being truly grateful to God for all the opportunities in our lives to hear and see him. The Word, people, places, and things. None of it is coincidental or an accident. Thank God for the present and the future he has given you.
Be Hopeful
2nd Corinthians 1: 20 says: “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.”
Being hopeful is trusting in God, His promises, and believing for what He has spoken into our lives.
The following is a devotional written by Eugene H. Peterson, the mind behind the Message translation of the bible, appearing in the Men’s Devotional Bible that I have used for some time. It really spoke to me about being hopeful. It is based on Jeremiah 32: 6-29.
Hope commits us to actions that connect with God’s promises.
What we call hoping is often only wishing. We want things we think are impossible, but we have better sense than to spend any money or commit our lives to them. Biblical hope, though, is an act-like buying a field in Anathoth. Hope acts on the conviction that God will complete the work that he has begun even when appearances, especially when the appearances, oppose it…
The great looming fact is this: In the flurry and panic of that day in Jerusalem, not at all unlike any randomly selected day in anyone’s week, the populace divided between a dull acquiescence to the inevitable and wild schemes for escape, the single practical act that stands out from the historical record is that Jeremiah bought a field in Anathoth for seventeen shekels. The act made the word of God visible, made a foothold of it for anyone who wanted to make a way out of chaotic despair into the ordered wholeness of salvation. Many made their way out.
We have to get practical. Really practical. The most practical thing we can do is hear what God says and act in appropriate response to it…Hope determined actions participate in the future that God is bringing into being. These acts are rarely spectacular. Usually, they take place outside sacred settings. Almost never are they perceived to be significant by bystanders. It is not easy to act in hope because most of the immediate evidence is against it. As a result, we live in one of the most impractical societies the world has ever seen. If we are to live practically, we must frequently defy the practicalities of our peers. It takes courage to act in hope. But it is the only practical action, for the only action that survives the decay of the moment and escapes the scrapheap of yesterday’s fashion.
Who do you want to be in 2025? Leave us a comment letting us know. We would love to read your “to be” statements as we continue to pray for what the new year holds.
Just remember that whatever it may be…
We will be right there with you.