I love the start of a new year.
I love the unwinding, not knowing what day it is between Christmas and new year and an opportunity to look back and reflect and look forward and plan.
A new year brings with it the sense of a new page and 365 days to write an amazing story of our life.
It brings with it the promise of being able to begin again, a fresh slate. It whispers, anything is possible.
A new year isn’t just about calendars or resolutions — it’s a fresh start. A chance to hit the reset button, refocus on what really matters, and reprioritize our lives. Whatever last year looked like — the wins, the fails, the messy bits — God gives us today as a new beginning.
And the good thing? God isn’t just calling us to try harder — He’s inviting us to be with Jesus, to become more like Jesus, and to do the things Jesus did. This year isn’t about being perfect — it’s about letting Him shape us, guide us, and use us to love and serve the world the way He did.
My plans for my first week back at work was to ease gently into things. Tidy my desk. Clear out my email inbox. Look at dates for term 1 for River Youth. Maybe if I was lucky tidy the youth cage. Which to clarify is not where we cage youth but where we keep pool noodles, toilet paper and all the other random things that River Youth is. My greatest hope for last week – That things would just flow perfectly and that I’d have a week where everything went to plan.
And then Thursday happened. On Thursday I do all the River news and pre-service notices and the email out and all the things. Thursday things. And I was expecting it to be routine and normal.
Thursday did not go routine and normal and I spent an hour – not an exaggeration – with an adobe help desk dude remotely accessing my screen to help me make the very programme I use every day for all my usual things – work and do what it used to and what I need it to do.
Now – confession – not a great confession to make with elders in the room present – I am not very tech savvy. When the adobe help desk dude asked me what my operating system was I had to google how to do that – which was then awkward when I realized he could see that tab open with that question – maybe a good warning for him. I can feel the judgement coming my way.
I also had to phone a friend – aka my very patient husband – to ask how to hotspot my phone to the desktop so it would work faster.
The help desk dude then did stuff and moved things around like magic, screens popping up here and there, and then asked me a question that made my heart race. Could he clear the media cache.
Do I know what a media cache is. Well vaguely. Technically. No.
After reassuring me it wouldn’t delete anything important, he did his remote magic, clicked a few things, and suddenly — everything worked.
Then he explained the problem in a way even I could understand.
He said, “Your system isn’t broken. It’s overloaded. You’ve blocked it by asking it to hold too much at once. It can’t process properly anymore.”
Then he added, “It’s like having too many tabs open.”
That one hurt.
Because Peter walks into my office and is genuinely concerned for my wellbeing when he sees how many tabs I have open.
Do I need all of them?
Yes. Yes, I do.
Here’s the thing.
Nothing was wrong with my computer.
It just needed space to breathe.
It needed things cleared so it could function the way it was designed to.
I laughed – well, maybe it wasn’t a laugh, I lamented to Tony that perhaps there was a sermon illustration on this.
Because how many of us are stepping into this new year with all our tabs still open?
Expectations we never named.
Anxieties we’ve normalised.
Hopes unrealized.
Prayers we’re still praying.
Commitments we said yes to without praying.
Unprocessed grief.
Lingering resentment.
Tangled Relationships.
Noise. Pressure. Hurry.
Nothing looks “broken” on the outside.
We’re still showing up. Still functioning. Still doing life.
But underneath, our internal system is overloaded.
And we’re wondering why we feel slow, stuck, distracted, spiritually foggy — why prayer feels harder, why peace feels like that dreaded blue updating screen and why we feel tired, worn out and stressed.
Sometimes the problem isn’t that God needs to give us something new.
Sometimes He’s inviting us to clear the cache and close the tabs.
To release what we were never meant to carry.
To close tabs that are draining our attention and affection.
To trust that letting go won’t delete what truly matters — it will make room for what does.
Because God didn’t design us to run at full capacity forever.
He designed us for rhythm.
For rest.
For focus.
For dependence.
Before you open anything new this year – ask God what needs to be closed.
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One Passion One Devotion 