Starting 2026

Revisiting “In the Beginning” for 2026. John 1:1-14

Happy New Year. We began 2026 almost two weeks ago, and in doing so, we started looking forward to what is to come. Many of us may have made resolutions to do better. Before looking forward and talking about resolutions, I want us to revisit “In the beginning.”

Three days before Christmas, I started reading John’s Gospel. Chapter one opens with, “In the beginning.” This opening phrase takes us back to when God began everything through the Word who was with God and was God. Reading further in chapter one, I discovered two more kinds of beginnings, which are not introduced with that phrase. Let’s reflect on these three beginnings to embrace 2026 with the One who began everything. The beginnings include the universe’s creation, our physical lives, and third, when we become members of God’s family.

Before we get to the beginnings, we need to review a few details about the opening verses. John takes us back before creation to introduce us to the Word (v. 1), who was with God and was God. This Word is a person—deity and the creator of all things. Later in the chapter, John tells us that the Word became flesh, in other words, he became a human being. (v. 14) We learn in v. 17 the name of this human being, Jesus Christ.

We are told that a man named John preceded Jesus in public ministry. John testified that he wasn’t the promised Messiah, but he was a witness to the Messiah. (vv. 6-8, 15) The apostle John didn’t include any birth details like Matthew and Luke did in their Gospels. John focused on the Word’s eternal existence, entrance into the world, and people’s responses to him. Just as Jesus is the central message in the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, so he is the central figure in John chapter one, as well as in the rest of the Gospel.

At the beginning of 2026, we revisit who to worship as God:Jesus Christ, the Creator. John declares, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

How often do we think of Jesus Christ, the pre-existing Word, as the creator of everything we can see and handle? I confess I don’t think about it often enough. I think of him as my Savior and Lord, my mediator with God, and the one who intercedes in heaven on my behalf. Rereading John’s Gospel reminds me that Jesus Christ is our Creator God. This is absolutely stunning and astonishing. He is worthy of our worship and allegiance.

We need this reminder because we are prone to turn away from the one true God and create our own gods. We are prone to substitute something else for the one true Creator God. The Bible declares, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened…they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” (Romans 1:21-23)

Our idols begin in our hearts. We see or think of something, we desire it, and we pursue it. This pursuit can turn into idolatry. My idols have included wanting appreciation, admiration, honor, time on my cellphone, demanding my way, lust, and self-gratification. The truth that there is only one true God and he is my Creator, reminds me that my idols are nothing compared to the One who is worthy of adoration and gratitude.

I attended a youth camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of southern California. I looked up into the night sky in the summer of 1964 as I lay in my sleeping bag. I saw a zillion twinkling stars and numerous shooting stars crossing the sky. I thought to myself, “I’d like to know God.” The thought passed through my mind like one of the shooting stars I saw in the sky. The thought came and went. What did it mean? I grew up attending church, Sunday school, and Vacation Bible School. I knew about God, but I didn’t know my Creator.

I heard Bill Russell, the great NBA player for the Boston Celtics, speak in 1969. He visited Nevada Southern University, which we know today as UNLV. I shook hands with Mr. Russell after his speech but he wasn’t my friend. I didn’t like Mr. Russell because he and the Celtics seemed to always beat the Philadelphia 76ers and Wilt Chamberlain, my favorite player. Yes, I shook Bill Russell’s hand, but I only knew about him. I didn’t know him as my friend.

I looked at God’s creation. I believed God made everything, I had “shaken hands” with many parts of his creation, but I didn’t know the Creator. This leads me to look back on the passing thought, “I’d like to know God,” as a disguised prayer request. I wanted to know him, but I didn’t know what that meant when I was twelve years old.

Revisiting Jesus Christ’s role in creation reminds us to think about our Creator, to ask him to reveal himself to us, and to give him our hearts, minds, and bodies so we honor him according to his worth. 2026 is a great time to become friends with our Creator through Jesus Christ, who was “the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

This time of year is also good to revisit the second beginning because it reminds us that Jesus Christ gave us life.  Our Creator is very personal–he made you and me. We feel insignificant in the immensity of the universe, but apostle John describes the universe’s Creator personally, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” (John 1:3-4) We exist because of Jesus Christ. We have life and light because of him. We don’t exist apart from him, the Word.

This stunning truth is necessary for our wellbeing in 2026. Revisiting our existence gives us reason to thank Jesus Christ for our lives. Paul preached in Athens and touched on this truth. “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth…he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else…God did this so that men would seek after him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:24-28) Do we thank him for our lives? The sooner we embrace this truth in 2026, the sooner we find how precious his gift of life is and we can ask him to empower us in the remaining eleven and a half months.

We revisit the third beginning because Jesus Christ is the one who gives us the right to become children of God. We are birthed into God’s family through Jesus Christ. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, he gave them the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (1:10-13)

We need to revisit the time when Jesus Christ gave us the right to become God’s family member, his son. I want you to revisit the time you were born again, born from above by the Holy Spirit. I want you to revisit the time the Holy Spirit gave you the joy in saying, “Abba, Father” to God. The start of 2026 is a good time to revisit the beginning of our spiritual birth.

A few weeks ago at a men’s meeting I attend, a man impressed upon me the need to call the man God used to introduce me to Jesus Christ and to become a child of God. I called Howard who lives in northern California. He’s several years older than I. He happily received my call and appreciated me thanking him for taking a sincere interest in my spiritual life in August 1970. 

A Detroit priest traveled to Ireland to visit relatives. One day he walked the shores of Lake Killarney with his uncle. The priest noticed his uncle smiling.

“Uncle Seamus you look very happy.”

“I am,” he replied.

“How come?” his nephew asked.

“The Father of Jesus is very fond of me.” (Max Lucado, Unshakable Hope, p. 123)

Jesus Christ delights in giving you and me the right to become God’s family members. God did it, not you and me: “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (1:13) It’s always a good time to revisit when God became our heavenly Father through Christ.

Revisiting our spiritual birth at the beginning of 2026 might reveal a spiritual need in our relationship  with our heavenly Father. Are we failing to talk to him and to let him talk to us through the Bible? Are we harboring resentment or bitterness? Are we focusing on disappointments? Our heavenly Father is waiting for us to turn to him for comfort, healing, and renewed vitality.

The apostle John mention3e two distressing things about people’s reaction to Jesus’ arrival on earth. The world didn’t know or recognize him (v. 10) and his own people did not receive him. (v. 11).

I told you earlier that I wanted to know God when I was twelve years old. I didn’t know what was going on inside of me at the time. Even though I went to religious services, I didn’t know God would be seeking me. I didn’t think to tell my parents or religious teachers my desire to know God. This could be your own experience.

Howard explained to me four basic truths to help me accept God’s desire to give me birth into his family. Let me go over them with you. God loves you and offers you a marvelous plan. Your sin separates you from God. You and I can’t bridge the chasm, but God chose to become a human in Jesus Christ. He lived, taught, and died for your sins. We must individually trust in him to be reconciled to God and receive the Holy Spirit by being born again. We receive this spiritual birth through prayer.

I recently suggested to a friend that she read the Gospel of John because it has been called the Gospel of Belief. It’s my prayer that she will make the commitment to read God’s word, because in it she will find that Jesus Christ is the life and light she needs.

In revisiting “In the beginning,” we have seen that Jesus Christ is the Creator of everything, the life and light we need, and through whom we are spiritually re-birthed as God’s children. Let’s resolve to worship him more enthusiastically, be more grateful for life, and rejoice heartily in God’s delight in making us his sons and daughters. Happy New Year.