This is the perfect time of year for renewal, and a good time to reflect on both Advent and the New Year.
 

For Advent, we get to revisit the anticipation leading up to the birth of Christ. More specifically, we will talk about hope, peace, joy, and love as recurring messages of this holiday season as well as the various seasons of our lives. Whenever something new happens in our lives, whether it be planned or unplanned, desirable or regretful, we can usually find these characteristics showing up somewhere in the situation. 

Hope is the search for encouragement in the midst of the change; peace involves personally coming to terms with the change; joy can be found through gratitude either because of or in spite of the change; and love is what we do with the change. I find that approaching new situations in my life with this perspective gives me more agency in my own reactions. 

And, in the new year, we get to focus even more on renewal. Of course, we can experience renewal any time of the year, but I think there's something useful in sharing our new goals together in community. Through focusing on renewal together, we gather new ideas and test our own as we discuss them with our neighbor. Sometimes simply voicing our plans helps us to process our visions and possibilities.