We have kissed 2020 goodbye. My family even held a “funeral” for 2020 on New Year’s Eve — we ate our dinner on black plates, drank soda out of black cups and cleaned our hands with black napkins.

But what if 2021 isn’t better? What if, in eight or nine months, COVID-19 is still taking hundreds of thousands of lives, we still can’t gather in large groups at concerts or sporting events, natural disasters are still ravaging the earth and devastation and disappointment still feel like they’re winning out?

(I heard a sermon on Sunday that inspired this post, so shoutout to Dennis Blythe at The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham.)

Where have you been putting your hope? Was it in 2021? Was it in the idea that this year everything will be better and life will go back to normal? I sure hope not.

Nothing we may hope for 2021 is guaranteed. Nothing is promised to us in this new year. In fact, 2021 could turn out being far worse than 2020 — seems impossible, but we just don’t know.

So if we aren’t to hope in this new year, where should we place our hope?

As Christians, we put our hope in Christ and move confidently into the new year knowing Jesus is our Savior and Redeemer. Nothing can happen to us on this earth that hasn’t already been conquered by His death on the cross. Fear, disappointment, destruction, death — Jesus won victory over all those things and more.

And because of Christ’s victory, we can hope and we can rest in the assurance of our future. A future spent eternally in the presence and glory of God. A future without death, pain and suffering.

This is what God has promised us — not good times in 2021, not a life without suffering and sickness, not a spouse and 2.5 children.

If you place your hope in 2021 (or any other worldly things), those things will let you down. There is only one place we can run with full confidence, and that is to the foot of the cross where our sinless Savior died and secured our eternity.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).