It’s late (or early) on New Year’s and I’m laying in the bed awake, listening. I hear the faint pops of fireworks way off in the distance and the muffled late night rumblings of my sons who are still too amped on Starbucks Mocha frappes to sleep.

I wish I could make out what they’re saying, but I know from the inflection in their tones that this after-midnight discussion is an excited one. A hopeful one. A conversation that is looking forward instead of backward. It’s the kind of conversation that always seems to happen on the one night each year when the old is gone and the new has come.

New beginnings bring out the best in us. They bring out the hope in us. They make us feel that anything is still possible, and that even though we’ve seen hard times, maybe, just maybe, this will be our time, our year.

Jesus makes all things new, and that one truth is enough to cause many of us to begin to talk excitedly about what is still to come. Maybe in hushed tones at first, but louder as we realize that for each one of us, the best really does lie ahead.

Last year we were wounded. This year we’ll be healers. Last year, scars defined us. This year, our Warrior King will turn our scars into stories to be told and retold, each time with a bit more joy, with a bit more of the realization that while scars may remind us of our pain, they also remind us that we are survivors who have been spared so that we can tell the stories of a King whose kingdom cannot be stopped, contained, conquered or explained. His war cry is the lion’s roar, and His warriors are the unafraid, the undaunted, and the unstoppable force being unleashed on an enemy whose days have long been numbered.

This King’s name is Jesus, and though the Chinese astrologists would want us to believe that 2013 is the year of the snake, we know better.

We know that this is the Year of the Lion.