For 2025, I want to give you and your family a wonderful Bible text to serve as your anchor for this year.

Isaiah 43:2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you” (NASB2000).

This is the Almighty God speaking to the prophet Isaiah during a very difficult time for him and his family. This text is considered to have been written during the time of the Hebrews’ exile in Babylonian captivity. Isaiah and his family were living in a situation that your family is possibly living in right now as well — uncertainty! They had been in captivity for a long time and were expecting deliverance, but it had not come yet. The prophet Isaiah and his family were experiencing frustration because their expectation was not their reality.

Even at the beginning of the year, a time that is usually full of expectation and joy, you could argue that your family is experiencing several challenges. In fact, there is research that even suggests that 2025 does not have many promising expectations.

Janna Anderson and Emily Vogels write in a Pew Research report that the advantaged will continue to enjoy more advantages, and the disadvantaged will fall further behind. With less organic work-based, person-to-person interaction, people will become even more isolated which will negatively affect their mental and emotional health. They suggest that greater economic and social anxiety could drive down birthrates, promote more instability, and lower household and family foundations; all while global tribalism and its political exploitation will create a vicious cycle of ultra-nationalism and hopeless rebellion. Vogels and Anderson also suggest higher rates of anxiety, depression and despair are likely to emerge; and increasingly, economic and social elites will be entirely out of touch with the growing number of distressed people who will form a growing share of the total population.

And what will become of our children this year? Grimault-Leprince, in the article “School, Peers, and Parental Expectations: Understanding Ill-being at School,” suggests that it is projected that high school students will have negative experiences because of their relationship with school norms, peer relations, and parental expectations. Regardless of their social and educational situation, students can experience anxiety and distress over the fear of disappointing their parents.

Indeed, 2025, really does sound like the troubled waters Isaiah wrote about, doesn’t it? Uncertainty!

• When you pass through waters and when you walk through fire. It’s not a question of if, but when. You will experience waters and fires this year. It’s part of being human. Don’t be surprised about the waters and the fires, because everyone who is alive experiences them.
• I will be with you. God promises that whenever you experience the waters and the fires, He is right there with you. You will never experience waters and fires by yourself.
• They won’t overflow you and you won’t get burned. If this doesn’t excite you, I’m not sure what will! God promises that when you experience waters and fires they will never overflow you and you will never get burned.