Looking Back at 2025, Stepping into 2026 with Immanuel

As 2025 comes to a close, I don’t feel the urge to measure it by accomplishments or outcomes. What lingers instead are moments... conversations, questions, silences, and realizations that have slowly reshaped how I understand faith, growth, and the presence of God.

This year has been less about answers and more about attention. Less about certainty and more about formation.

I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to the idea that the Christian life is not something we optimize or complete, but something we live with God, one ordinary day at a time.

2025: A Year of Reorientation

If I had to name what 2025 offered me, it would be this... a growing awareness that much of my spiritual energy had been spent trying. Trying to get it right, trying to be useful, trying to stay ahead of uncertainty. And slowly, graciously, God has been loosening my grip on that posture.

Through Scripture, conversation, prayer, and reflection, I’ve been reminded that faith is not primarily about doing things for God, but about learning to live with Him. That has touched every area of life in work, relationships, rest, and even the questions surrounding the future.

The good news I keep returning to is simple and unsettling in the best way: God is already here.

Looking Ahead to 2026: Immanuel and the Shape of Growth

As I look toward 2026, the word that has been quietly rising to the surface is Immanuel—God with us. Not as a slogan. Not as a theological concept alone. But as a lived reality.

Immanuel reminds me that growth doesn’t begin with effort, it begins with presence. God is not distant, waiting for clarity or improvement. He is with us in work and rest, in certainty and ambiguity, in strength and limitation.

As I’ve been praying into this coming year, one verse has begun to feel like a vision for how life with God might take shape:

“And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and all the people.” Luke 2:52

This verse doesn’t describe a dramatic moment or a spiritual breakthrough. It describes growth... slow, embodied, relational growth happening over time in the life of Jesus.

This includes:

• Wisdom (the mind)
• Stature (the body)
• Favor with God (the soul)
• Favor with people (the heart)

Jesus didn’t grow in isolation or compartmentalization. He grew as a whole person, fully present to God, others, and the ordinary rhythms of life. That feels like a faithful vision for the year ahead.

A Hopeful Posture for the Year Ahead

I don’t enter 2026 with a detailed plan or a list of resolutions. What I carry instead is a posture:

• To notice God’s nearness
• To value formation over productivity
• To grow slowly, faithfully, and honestly
• To trust that God is at work in the ordinary

If Luke 2:52 describes the shape of a whole life, then Immanuel is the soil it grows in. Growth is possible because God is near. My hope for 2026 is to live as if that nearness is not just true, but real and shaping how I learn, how I care for my body, how I love people, and how I walk with God.

The Invitation

This space, this site, this writing, is part of that practice. Not a place of polished certainty, but a place of reflection. Field notes from a life being formed. Questions held in God’s presence. Growth that happens quietly, like roots.

The good news I want to live into and share is this:

God is with us.

And that changes everything, slowly and surely.