By Katie Harmon-McLaughlin, Formation Ministries team director and World Church Spiritual Formation team lead

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

It is in the bleakest, dimmest moments along my spiritual journey that I have recognized a yearning for even a spark to illuminate just enough for the way ahead. I notice how darkness has made visible light I would otherwise not see, like the soft glow of the moon and the radiance of the stars and the dancing flame of a candle. In my journey, these are the subtle ways that Sacred Presence keeps showing up as grace, even when I cannot access it on my own.

Just when I think all hope is gone and the darkness of uncertainty or despair overwhelms, I am reminded of the words from the Psalmist, that “even darkness is not dark to you, the night is as bright as the day” (Psalm 139). When God seems inaccessible, when I lose my ability to feel the presence, the darkness carries its own invitation by evoking the longing for God that is the origin of my faith.

When I cry, “Where are you in this, God?” I am also acknowledging my aching desire to know God, sense God, be with God in the realities of this life. The longing itself is light in the dark. It stokes what is most essential in the soul during the longest nights of our faith and waits with perseverance for a season when a brighter light will arrive again.

The darkness is for growth, and for preparation for the light that will come. This light, even now, is rising, stretching out across this great earth as it turns and turns. It is just beginning again—as it always does and always will—to touch everything in its path, as mercy, as grace that flows unrestricted.

Opportunities for new beginnings occur in each moment, day, or year. Even when we feel stuck, the Spirit is always offering an invitation to return to our deeper intention of living life fully with God, others, creation, and our truest selves. Pay attention at the opening of this new year to what feels like a fresh beginning in you. Where is the Spirit inviting you into a new possibility, awareness, or way of being?

Prayer Phrase

“…he has given us a new birth into a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3).

Spiritual Practice

Weaving a Life

Hold, or imagine yourself holding, a piece of patterned cloth. Examine it carefully. Notice overlapping threads mingling colors that form the design. Write a journal entry or meditate about the threads and patterns of your life. What design do you see? How does the life pattern you are weaving create justice and wholeness in God’s world? What new pattern is God calling you to weave in 2025?

Today’s Prayer for Peace

Engage in a daily practice of praying for peace in our world. Click here to read today’s prayer and be part of this practice of peace.