At the start of this year, I challenge you to these tasks: First, spread love. The world needs love. In order to trust in a God that is good and promises good things, the world needs to be able to believe that love still exists. When we spread love to our neighbor, we help promote the goodness of God. And in turn, we will help others trust in the goodness of God a bit more. This leads us into our second task: Trust God. As Christians, we need to trust God. Trusting God is how we find hope in good things to come. Without trust in God, we may start placing our trust in other things, and we are journeying away from God. Give God more opportunity to earn your trust, or better yet, trust in God anyway from the start. And even when God seems to break your trust by not doing what you wanted or prayed, know that God cannot control everything and sometimes is already working out something better for you that you just have to wait for and have faith for. I know it is easier said than done, which is why we are going to work this year on our theme word of “trust.” Last year was our year of prayer. This year is our year of trusting. Your third challenge is to believe in love and trust. To spread love and to trust God, we need to believe that they still exist. We need to believe that there are still people who love each other and place faith in one another. We also need to believe that we can still trust one another and God, and not assume that everyone out there is just going to break it. The world seems to want to take love and trust from us; it is our responsibility to counteract that and put a little bit of it back.