Guest Post: Why Belovedness Matters More Than Resolutions This New Year

The start of a new year can feel both hopeful and heavy—full of expectations we don’t always have the energy to meet. In this guest post, Rachael Newham, author of Beloved is Where We Begin, reflects on how to embrace God’s love, find spiritual rest in our weariness, and let gentleness, not grand New Year’s resolutions, guide the year ahead. It’s a refreshing reminder that our identity as God’s beloved is the truest place to begin, offering a foundation for peace, reflection, and gentle growth in 2026.

I don’t know about you, but I find the New Year a strange time. I’m half reflecting on the year just gone, and half expectant about what is to come. Every year, I have this hope that flipping open the pages of a new year will somehow help me to leave old grief behind and look forward with the kind of positivity that is plastered all over the media, which seems to chorus “New year, new you” with tiring predictability.

The same features run every January, don’t they? Imploring us to get fit, lose 10lbs and emerge like a butterfly from its cocoon with flair and confidence.

And yet, (for those of us in the Northern hemisphere at least) this call to new energy and life comes in the depths of winter when the days are still short, cold and often a little grey. It’s not the most motivating of landscapes to embark on life changes.

In fact, most of the natural world is still deep in hibernation. The branches are still bare, the ground still barren and the new life that spring ushers in is still distant.

Seasonally speaking, we’re still in midwinter.

It’s not a time for radical changes and punishing regimes, but for gentleness.

Gentleness is such an underrated and overlooked virtue; it’s not flashy or often praiseworthy, but it’s the willingness to come alongside one another and love without agenda.

In scripture, the only time Jesus describes himself is recorded in Matthew’s gospel and it says:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Here is an invitation to come to Jesus, not fixed and flashy, but one full of compassion.

I don’t know about you, but it’s just what I need as we enter this new year.

For so many, both globally and personally, 2025 was a bruising year full of political turmoil and fear - so the idea that this coming year requires a new me with energy and vigour is exhausting.

Instead, we have an invitation to come to Jesus with our weariness and find ourselves met with gentleness and rest.

It is a love which sees us as we are, without pretence.

This is the love that calls us by name and calls us close not for any reason but that we are loved by God, who is our creator, sustainer and comforter.

When we are able to bear our belovedness as our identity, it can help us to extend that love and gentleness to those around us in a world which often dismisses gentleness as weakness.

Jesus shows us a different way, one that does not shy away from protecting the vulnerable and standing up for what is right, but that extends gentleness to the most vulnerable people and vulnerable parts of ourselves with an everlasting love.

As we enter this new year, may we do so with gentleness rather than grandiose proclamations, reminded that our identity as God’s beloved is where we begin.

God of gentleness,
May you meet us in our aching.
Father of compassion,
May you cover us with your peace.
Let us inhale our belovedness
And exhale our bravado.^[1]

^[1] Beloved Is Where We Begin, p112.

For more of Rachael Newham’s reflections on gentleness, rest, and living from a place of belovedness, you can explore her new book, Beloved is Where We Begin. 

Discover Beloved is Where We Begin here.