Dear Friends in Christ

Happy New Year to each of you!  I pray this will be the best year of your life.

I keep a verse under the glass on my desk from Jeremiah 29:11…”For I know the plans I have for you, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”  As we prepare to navigate through the peaks and valleys of another year may we remember this wonderful promise.

One sure sign that we have a strong relationship with God is that we believe more in the future than in the past.  God graciously divided our lives into days and years so that we could let go of our yesterdays and anticipate our tomorrows.  For the past mistakes, God offers forgiveness and an ability to move on.  For our tomorrows God give us the gift of excitement and expectation.

God’s promise is a future and a hope.  A wise man once said: “What oxygen is to the lungs, hope is for the soul.”  Hope helps us move past disappointments and sets us free to dream.  Hope gives us confidence as we face the ups and downs of every day.

Hope is not something we just acquire.  Hope always comes from something or someone else.  Authentic hope comes from Jesus Christ whose birth we have just celebrated.  We have hope in who Jesus is and in what He is able to do.  Jesus’ resurrection is the ultimate source of hope.

As we move into another year Jesus is with us.  Jesus gives us courage for the future.  He is in charge of this new year and He has a plan.  I encourage each of you to surrender this new year to God.  He will be with us every step of the way.

2009 was a wonderful and productive year for our congregation.  Thanks for all each of you did to make it so.  The Calhoun family would like to thank everyone for the many nice cards and greetings from our church family over Christmas.

Please do everything you can to make 2010 an even better year for First United Methodist Church. 

See you in Church,

 Rick Calhoun, Pastor