January 2026: Happy New Year
Happy New Year!
We have lots of songs that we sing during this time of the year. On a personal note, I’m always sad on December 26th that the time for Christmas music has largely passed. But there is one song that lingers as we approach the new year, and that is Auld Lang Syne.
Auld Lang Syne is a Scottish song that is sung traditionally at the end of the old year and to open the new year. You’ve likely heard it, even if you don’t know the title. It translates to something along the lines of “days gone by” or “old times sake.” This song helps us bid farewell to the passing of another year.
It begins “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?/ Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?” The force of the words is that we shouldn’t forget those that we’ve met in the last year, or the old times that we’ve had together. It’s a song of remembrance of the old in spite of the new.
But then again, there might be things in the past year we’d like to forget. It’s fitting, as I’ve written for the new year before, that we as Christians take a look at the new year as a time to remember that we are new in Christ every day, every moment. We have the forgiveness of sins that washes away what has gone before and leaves us with a clean slate for the future.
But we also must remember that the past isn’t completely undone in Christ. We’d like to forget the past and focus only on the future, but our old memories aren’t completely gone. We don’t, even can’t, “forgive and forget.” Those things still happened.
But, despite the sin that we’ve committed, God “remembers our sin no more.” That means that he doesn’t act upon our sin. Instead, those sins of the past have been justified by his blood. We all know those past sins don’t go away because we keep remembering them. We think about the sin that we’ve done to hurt others and that others have done to hurt us. But in spite of that reality, God has forgiven us over our sin and taken away the shame of the sin that has been committed to us. Jesus bore all that guilt and shame on the cross. Our life in Christ isn’t about forgetting the past or likewise remembering the old in spite of the new but remembering the old in light of the new. We can look to a new year confidently because the mistakes of the past don’t define us, and our futures are fully in the Lord’s hands.
We will remember those old times; we don’t face each new year as a complete blank slate. But that memory doesn’t mean that the sin has power over us. We remember the past, knowing that our sin has been forgiven, and we look to the future knowing that God walks with us. The new year is a time of excitement for that reason: we walk into it as saints purified by the blood of the Lamb. I pray this year is full of the peace and joy that comes with each day that we spend in the arms of our savior.