Betsy Shirley writes that this year has been full of real challenges, but the darkness did not overcome the light: The church has a funny sense of time. When everyone else is looking at Spotify Wrapped and other year-in-reviews, the Christian liturgical calendar has already turned the page, insisting a new year is already here. You’d be forgiven for thinking of Advent as an end-of-year marker, but as any theology nerd will remind you, Advent is the first season in the church’s annual cycle, not the last. Which is to say: The church starts the new year not with champagne or fireworks, but with a season of waiting. In the Northern Hemisphere, this year-end/year-beginning coincides with colder days, longer nights, and bare trees. And it’s in this moment—when it’s gray and freezing and most things look dead—that Christians make a daring claim: This bleakness all around us is not the end, but a beginning. The new life God promises begins in the dark. You’ve felt some bleakness this year, I suspect: So many of the stories Sojourners published were stories of loss: jobs, good health, a sense of safety, people we loved, or dreams we had for the future. We grieve. And amid all this, Advent has the nerve to whisper: God is at work. In our grief over all that’s ended, we’re invited to keep watch and stay alert, attentive to signs of the light that is both coming and already here. At this flipping of the calendar, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite stories that gave us hope in 2025—stories of creative defiance, courageous solidarity, and radical testimony to a way of living that transcends this ol’ mess. | 
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