When I was a teenager (many moons ago), I loved to read novels about the future. I remember reading Farenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, and others of that ilk—and watching television shows like Star Trek and The Jetsons. I wondered about whether we could ever get so far into the future as 1984, and what that future would be like. I speculated about whether I would live to see the turn of the century, but could not imagine that time so many years ahead. Now I am astonished that we are all living in 2012, and that what life is like is way beyond anything I could imagine.

No, we are not flying around in “space cars,” but the shuttle has been to space so often that before its end, most people didn’t even bother to watch the takeoffs. We have computers we can carry in our pockets or hold in our hands. We can instantly text people all over the world, and international news comes to us in minutes, not weeks. We can take pictures with our phones and post them online in seconds. The future is far different than I imagined in the sixties.

Now that I am closer to the end of my life than the beginning, I suspect that there is yet more the future has in store for me. As in my youth, I probably cannot imagine what that will be—for me, for our church, for our cosmos. But what I do not have to imagine is the faithfulness of God, the grace of Jesus Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. These, which have been here from before the beginning, are here now, and will continue until God wraps up history with a new heaven and a new earth.

Happy New Year! 2012 will bring changes, but rejoice in this: “Great is God’s steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord!” (Psalm 117