Grace

As the clock strikes midnight on December 31, many people may share a kiss with their significant other, cheer, and use noisemakers to celebrate a new year. And sure, a kiss at midnight and making noise are some of the common new year traditions that are said to bring you luck, they certainly not the only ones.

Here are some of the most unique, and maybe even lesser known, New Year’s superstitions from various countries around the world that are thought to help bring good luck and ward off the bad for the new year.

Walk Around with an Empty Suitcase - In Spain and Latin American the custom is supposed to welcome new experiences and a year filled with traveling.

Throw Furniture from a Window - In some European cultures, you can find people throwing couches, fridges and more from their window when the clock strikes midnight. This symbolizes doing away with the old and welcoming in the new.

Leave Windows and Doors Open - Leaving your doors and windows open on New Year's Eve is said to let out the old year.

Break Dishes - In Denmark it is considered good luck and a sign of friendship to break dishes and plates on the homes of those closest to you.

Clean the House - Many people around the world believe in starting New Year's Day with a clean house in order to avoid carrying the old or dirt of last year into the new year.

Burn Photos - An Ecuadorian superstition calls for burning photos of old memories before midnight in order to make way for the new things to come.

Possible Preaching Angle:
While we don’t participate in worldly superstitions, these traditions can be an interesting way to remind believers that the Bible promises them a fresh start every morning with God (“new every morning” Lam. 3:22-23) and not just on New Year’s Day.

In the film Jurassic Park, after all the wheels have come off and everything has gone wrong, the character Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum, utters the film’s most famous line:

“You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should.”

That is the principle that Paul cites long before that film was ever made: just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. This is the Jurassic Park principle of Christian freedom and Paul unpacks what it means for the Christian life.

Love over rights.

Paul is pro-freedom. He agrees with the Corinthians when they say: “Everything is permissible.” But then he challenges them:

• "Not everything is beneficial."
• "Not everything builds up."
• "No one is to seek his own good, but the good of the other person."

In other words, just because you’re free to do something doesn’t always mean you should. There’s that governing Jurassic Park Principle.

That doesn’t mean you never express your freedom. Paul isn’t saying the Christian life is all restriction and abstinence. He’s saying that love trumps freedom. Our love for others is more important than the full expression of our freedom. Freedom may say we can but love may say we shouldn’t.

Possible Preaching Angle:
Paul’s guiding principle is this: love trumps freedom. That means sometimes we choose not to use our freedom because it could harm someone else, particularly in the faith.

In her testimony for Christianity Today, Caresse Spencer recounts how she demolished her faith in pursuit of her "best life" during the pandemic.

In 2020, I typed two lethal words: F- God. With that, I resigned from Christianity. As the world fell apart due to the pandemic, my faith crumbled too. I stripped my vocabulary of the term God, soaked in the oppression of my past. Anger consumed me.

Caresse began questioning Christian teachings, especially around sexuality and biblical contradictions. Years of suppressing her desires left her feeling robbed and burdened by faith. Torn between the God she once served and her true self, she finally chose herself, embarking on what she called a “world tour”-exploring queer love, polyamory, sex, drugs, and even other religions. “I said yes to everything I had once denied myself and believed I had found freedom.”

Initially, the rebellion felt exhilarating: “There’s a rush that comes with rebellion and a thrill in doing things once feared.” But anxiety and emptiness crept in. She found herself “floating in a vast emptiness-lost and scared. Life had lost its meaning.” When rebellion no longer satisfied, she was left with “no God, no faith, no love, no peace.”

Suicidal thoughts became a constant presence. At her lowest, she cried out, “Help me!” and then a Christian friend called, asking if she was okay. For the first time, she admitted she was not. Her friend’s support pulled her back from the brink. Later, her sister gently asked, “Do you want to surrender?” Caresse accepted: “It was the invitation I’d been waiting for without even knowing it. I said yes-to surrendering my pride, confusion, rebellion, and emptiness. My life changed in an instant.”

Now, she talks to God about everything and has found peace. “God refused to let me die in disbelief. Because of this grace, I now understand that the only way to find true life is to lose it first.”

The knitting needle moves quickly, back and forth, making a pattern. It’s an Instagram video in the fascinating repair genre. Similar clips show rougher work—a stonemason restoring a 900-year-old cathedral, a handyman reviving a neglected home room by room. But in this video, the task is to fix a moth-eaten sweater. In mere moments, the wool looks good as new. The hole has disappeared, the weaving so exactly matched by an unseen mender that some would take to be digital trickery, had they not shown every stitch.

These repair videos aren’t quite honest, of course. They’re practiced and edited, glossing over the less-than- perfect bits, and skipping entirely the discipline and tedium required to master a craft. On a platform that reflects so well our culture’s tendency to seek the easier option, repair videos choose the inverse.

Though we see it most obviously in social media, the consumerist tendency against repair is rooted deeply in our culture and institutions. We often see that inclination in ourselves. Children’s socks get holes, but we do not darn them. We throw them away, alongside so many other products made to be disposable or planned for quick consumption and then obsolescence.

However, repair is not always the right choice. Sometimes things really are broken beyond repair, subjected to the laws of physics, human error, and the desolation of sin. A marriage can’t be repaired when one spouse won’t repent of abuse. We can’t haul up the Titanic and send it on a second voyage.

The tendency toward repair deeply resonates with the story of salvation. In Isaiah 58, repair is a sign of the restoration of God’s blessing, of the people’s reunion with God after repentance from their sin. This theme continues into the New Testament, where Peter preaches that the time is coming “for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago” (Acts 3:21).

A 27-year-old Chinese student studying in Japan was rescued twice from Mount Fuji within a span of four days—after he returned to the mountain to retrieve personal belongings left behind during his first rescue.

According to Japanese authorities, the man was first airlifted from Mount Fuji earlier in the week due to climbing difficulties. After the rescue, he realized he had left behind his mobile phone and other possessions on the mountain. Determined to recover them, he returned to Mount Fuji just days later, despite the clear dangers of a second off-season climb.

On his return ascent, he was spotted over 3,000 meters above sea level by another climber, who alerted rescue teams. The man was again brought down the mountain and taken to a hospital, reportedly suffering from symptoms of altitude sickness. Officials later confirmed it was the same individual rescued days earlier.

Mount Fuji is snow-covered for much of the year and officially open to hikers only between early July and early September. The risks of off-season climbing are well known, and local authorities have stressed the dangers repeatedly. The dual rescue has drawn attention not only for its rarity but also for the man’s decision to return so soon. Though he was not charged with any crime, local officials emphasized the seriousness of the situation and lamented the loss of resources required for such rescue operations.

Hopefully this young man will do a better job of learning from his mistakes in the future.

Possible Preaching Angles:

It’s easy to fall into repeating our mistakes, even when we know better. Ignoring wise counsel can lead us into real danger. But never forget the grace of God, which offers the incredible gift of second chances.

The hottest travel amenity is getting your time back—because we all hate to wait!

In November 2024, Walt Disney World began piloting a new paid service that allows visitors to the Florida resort’s four theme parks to bypass regular lines for popular attractions. Vail Resorts introduced a gear membership program meant to let skiers skip rental lines. More hotels are charging for perks like early check-in.

About half of the more than 650 theme parks, zoos, aquariums, monuments and observation decks surveyed by the travel-research firm Arival offered skip-the-line or VIP access tickets in 2024. Of those not offering these options, 18% said they would introduce similar access in 2025.

The trend highlights how cost and comfort are becoming more intermingled for travelers, especially those hitting crowded destinations. And how those with tighter budgets risk ending up worse off.

These offers are often aimed at families. Rochelle Marcus, a stay-at-home mom in Oxford, N.C., says parents have extra incentive to pay up for a pass during school breaks, when crowds are larger. “That way everyone’s not tired, cranky, and grumpy at the end of the day,” she says. And as someone else in the article concluded: “Life is too short to be spent waiting in line all the time.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Impatience; Waiting – This shows the negative side of human nature that is impatient and wants favorable status. This status is gained by payment. 2) Advocate; Invitation; Rights - The positive side is that we have an advocate who gifted us with priority access to the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace. You cannot buy your way into access with God.

Harvie Conn was a missionary in Korea. And Harvie was trying to reach prostitutes for Christ. And in the Asian culture, prostitutes had a far lower status than prostitutes do in other societies. And Harvie couldn’t break through, because when he offered the love of Christ, they said, ‘sorry, Christ would never have anything to do with me. You don’t understand. I am an absolute…I’m scum.’ Finally, one day Harvie said, “Let me tell you the doctrine of predestination. Let me tell you the doctrine of election.”

‘Our God doesn’t love you because you’re good…doesn’t love you because you’re moral… doesn’t love you because you’re humbler…doesn’t love you because you’re surrendered. He actually just chooses people and sets His love on you and loves you just because He loves you. That’s how you’re saved.’

And the prostitute said, ‘What?!!

Harvie: ‘Yes!!”

She said, ‘You mean He just loves people like that?’

Harvie: ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, how do I know if He loves me?’

Then Harvie said, ‘When I tell you the story of Jesus dying for you, does that move you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you want Him?’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘You aren’t capable of wanting Him IF He wasn’t wanting you! You aren’t capable of loving Him unless He was loving you.’ And Harvie found that prostitutes started coming to Christ because they got a radical new cultural identity

Editor’s Note: You can access the entire sermon here

Need some perspective on the brevity of life? Here's a God's-eye view of the earth: Check out this real-time map of births and deaths around the world.

In 1950, there were 2.5 billion humans. As of January 2025, there are nearly 8.1 billion people. In another 30 years, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections, there will be more than 9 billion.

Brad Lyon has a doctoral degree in mathematics and does software development. He wanted to make those numbers visual. So, he and designer Bill Snebold made a hugely popular interactive simulation map of births and deaths in the U.S. alone (as of 2024, population 337 million)—the population of which is on pace to increase 44 percent by 2050.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Birth; Death; Life, short - How many people will die in the next minute? How many will be born? How should these numbers motivate us? Think of each of them as a story, as a unique soul loved infinitely by God. This is an excellent starting point for a sermon on Easter, resurrection, and our mortality. Consider projecting the real-time map as a stunning visual illustration.

In August 1914, a British scientist and explorer set out from England with a crew of 28 men, intent on accomplishing a spectacular goal: crossing the whole continent of Antarctica coast to coast on foot. The explorer’s name was Sir Ernest Shackleton, and his ship was called the Endurance. Shackleton and his crew never made it to the continent; instead, the Endurance got stuck in pack ice, and eventually sank. The crew was forced to abandon ship.

What followed is one of the most harrowing survival stories of the twentieth century. They spent months floating on ice flows in the Southern Ocean, then their months on a barren, uninhabited island about 800 miles away from civilization, then Shackleton’s desperate journey across those 800 miles of treacherous sea in a lifeboat to South Georgia Island, and then finally a 36-hour-long trek across the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia to arrive at a whaling port. In all, from the moment the Endurance had gotten stuck in pack ice to Shackleton’s arrival at the whaling port, it had been 492 days. Miraculously, not one of the 28 men lost their life.

Shackleton wrote his book in 1919 not only to record their scientific discoveries and retell their wild adventures of survival, but also to express his profound gratitude and admiration for those involved in his rescue.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Testimony; Witness - What we see in Shackleton’s story is the same thing we see throughout the Bible, and the same thing we feel in our own hearts: rescue stories demand to be shared. When we receive a radical rescue, our hearts demand a response. How can we respond to the rescue we have received from God?

Bonnie Crawford was in danger of missing a connecting flight for a board meeting last week when a United Airlines customer-service rep saved the day. She got rebooked on a pricey nonstop flight in business class. For free.

You’re probably thinking, “No airline ever does that for me.” Crawford isn’t just any frequent flier. She has United’s invitation-only Global Services status.

It’s a semi-secret, status-on-steroids level that big spenders strive for every year. American and Delta have souped-up statuses, too, with similarly haughty names: ConciergeKey and Delta 360°. The airlines don’t like to talk about what it takes to snag an invite, how many people have such status, or even the perks. Even the high rollers themselves don’t know for sure.

Get into these exclusive clubs and you get customer service on speed dial, flight rebooking before you even know there’s trouble, lounge access, and priority for upgrades. Not to mention bragging rights and swag. People even post unboxing videos of their invites on YouTube.

Anyone with this super status needn’t fret about the value of airline loyalty or the devaluation of frequent-flier points.

Crawford was invited to Global Services for 2017 and was hooked. “It was the first taste of this magic, elusive, absolutely incredible status,’’ she says. She wasn’t invited again until this year and fears she won’t be invited back next year due to fewer costly international flights in her new job.

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Boasting; Pride – This shows the negative side of human nature that loves to boast about their favored position and humble-brag about their status. This status is gained by merit. 2) Advocate; Grace; Invitation; Rights - The positive angle is that we have an Advocate who gifted us a special relationship with the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace.

Saying farewell to yesterday might be a challenge for some, but not for the numerous New Yorkers who bid a traditional farewell to 2023 in Times Square ahead of the big New Year's Eve celebration. At the 17th annual Good Riddance Day Thursday, bad memories were burned – literally.

Good Riddance Day is inspired by a Latin American tradition in which New Year’s revelers stuffed dolls with objects representing bad memories before setting them on fire.

In Times Square, attendees wrote down their bad memories on pieces of paper. "COVID," "Cancer," “Our broken healthcare system,” “Spam calls and emails,” “Bad coffee,” and “Single Use Plastics,” were some of the entries.

Every December 28, this event gives people the opportunity to write down everything they want to leave in the past and destroy any unpleasant, unhappy, and unwanted memories – so that they can toss them into an incinerator and watch them vanish.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What painful experience, memory, or consequence caused by sin would you like to leave behind in the New Year? This is a reality for the believer “Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!” (Lam 3:22-23). With Paul we can say “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead” (Phil. 3:13).

Leader, author, and evangelist Leighton Ford wrote the following as he remembered his wife, Jean Graham Ford, and her brother, Billy.

“Don’t forget the evangelists.” That’s what my Jeanie would say every time we headed off to help young leaders to spread the gospel. “Don’t forget the evangelists.”

She and her brother Billy were two of a kind. Both raised on a red clay dairy farm in North Carolina with a strict mother, who taught them the Bible and a kind father who guided them with his prayers. They both became Christ sharers who felt called to let others know this God who loved and could save them.

He traveled across the world preaching to millions and millions. She stayed close to home for the most part living that good news with her three children and her husband. He raised his powerful and strong voice like a thunder. She spoke like a quiet stream with a voice made quiet by her childhood polio.

He opened his arms wide with an invitation to come to the cross. She held her arms open closely hugging others with a touch that took away tears and fears. He preached about sin and judgment and forgiveness. She showed grace in her face. He used stadiums as his pulpit. She taught in a spacious room in a friend’s home.

Now that they are both with the Lord they loved, I can see them standing side-by-side, and imagine him saying: “You are two of the very best evangelists I’ve ever had.” So – may we never forget the evangelists!

Gift cards make great stocking stuffers—just as long as you don’t stuff them in a drawer and forget about them after the holidays. Americans are expected to spend nearly $30 billion on gift cards this holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation. Restaurant gift cards are the most popular, making up one-third of those sales.

Most of those gift cards will be redeemed. Paytronix, which tracks restaurant gift card sales, says around 70% of gift cards are used within six months. But many cards—tens of billions of dollars’ worth—wind up forgotten or otherwise unused. That’s when the life of a gift card gets more complicated, with expiration dates or inactivity fees that can vary by state.

After clothing, gift cards will be the most popular present this holiday season. Nearly half of Americans plan to give them, according to the National Retail Federation. But many will remain unspent.

Gift cards get lost or forgotten, or recipients hang on to them for a special occasion. In a July survey, Bankrate found that 47% of U.S. adults had at least one unspent gift card or voucher. The average value of unused gift cards is $187 per person, a total of $23 billion.

While it may take gift cards years to expire, experts say it’s still wise to spend them quickly. Some cards—especially generic cash cards from Visa or MasterCard—will start accruing inactivity fees if they’re not used for a year, which eats away at their value. Inflation also makes cards less valuable over time. And if a retail store closes or goes bankrupt, a gift card could be worthless.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the gifts of God (his promises, salvation, spiritual gifts, talents, the Bible) often remain unused, unopened by faith, and neglected by so many people.

Jennifer Nizza grew up on grew up on Long Island, New York, as part of an Italian and culturally Catholic family. For her, Christmas was mainly about Santa Claus, antipasto, and pretty lights on houses. However, her understanding of spirituality was limited to the supernatural realm, shaped by conversations about ghosts and early experiences with tarot cards.

At age 13, the door to demons was thrown wide open. a tarot card reading ignited a fascination with the occult. Jennifer delved deeper into this world, experiencing fear and discomfort as she felt the presence of demonic forces. Seeking answers, she consulted a psychic medium who claimed Jennifer was a medium herself, gifted with the ability to connect with the departed.

She writes, “But the further I went down that road, the more it seemed demons were surrounding me and I experienced so many moments of fear. I felt them touching me, and I could see them manifesting as shadowy figures and animals.

Jennifer loved the thought of helping clients attain the desires of their heart and communicate with their loved ones. But she lived in constant fear of bad spirits and what they would do to her. She said:

In my mid-30s, at a moment of especially intense fear, I suddenly cried out the name of Jesus Christ. Not my spirit guide or a deceased person or an angel—Jesus! Almost immediately I felt a peace that surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7). This began my journey to full Christian faith. And I had no idea what the gospel was. But I knew I didn’t want to be a psychic anymore.

Ten months later, a chance encounter with a friend who was attending a Bible-based church sparked Jennifer's curiosity. Despite initial hesitation, a few weeks later she felt a strong desire to visit the church. She shares:

I was singing along with the worship music when the lyrics “Jesus saved me” flashed on the screen, instantly transporting me back to the moment I had cried out to Jesus Christ. I started crying with joy, because I knew in my heart that he saved me.

Filled with joy and newfound conviction, I sought to understand the Bible's teachings on my profession. I didn’t have a Bible on hand, so I asked Google, “What does the Bible say about psychic mediums?” And I was shocked to find verses like Deuteronomy 18:9–13, which condemn anyone who “practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or . . . consults the dead.” Since Jesus had saved me, I would have to pick up my cross and follow him, even at the cost of quitting my job.

In the ten years since, Jesus has changed my heart and my life as only he can. I am no longer caught in the hamster wheel of endlessly seeking peace, joy, and fulfillment without finding them. Today, I continue to share the gospel whenever I can, in part by devoting myself to exposing the demonic darkness I served for many years and warning others against following the same path.

Editor’s Note: Today Jennifer Nizza is a speaker and Christian content creator. She is the author of From Psychic to Saved .

Like many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. The cognitive scientist says, “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days.” And he’s still bad at finding his way around.

The world is full of people like Uttal—and their opposites, the folks who always seem to know exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. Scientists sometimes measure navigational ability by asking someone to point toward an out-of-sight location and it’s immediately obvious that some people are better at it than others.

Cognitive psychologist Nora Newcombe says, “People are never perfect, but they can be as accurate as single-digit degrees off, which is incredibly accurate.” But others, when asked to indicate the target’s direction, seem to point at random. “They have literally no idea where it is.”

Several cultural factors were associated with wayfinding skills. Country folk did better, on average, than people from cities. And among city-dwellers, those from cities with more chaotic street networks did better than those from cities like Chicago, where the streets form a regular grid. This is perhaps because residents of grid cities don’t need to build such complex mental maps.

Results like these suggest that an individual’s life experience may be one of the biggest determinants of how well they navigate. Support for the notion that people might improve with practice also comes from studies of what happens when people stop using their navigation skills. Researchers recruited 50 young adults and questioned them about their lifetime experience of driving with GPS. Then they tested the volunteers in a virtual world that required them to navigate without GPS. The heaviest GPS users did worse, they found. This strongly suggests that GPS reliance causes diminished skills, rather than poor skills leading to greater GPS use.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Guidance; Lostness - Some people are better at staying on course than others. However, in the spiritual realm, we are all hopelessly lost until Jesus came to our rescue (Isa. 53:6; Luke 19:10); 2) Believers; Direction; Sin, consequences of – Believers sometimes wander away from the truth and need the rod and the staff of the shepherd (Ps. 23:4; Ps. 119:176; Jam. 5:19).