St. Peter Lutheran Church
2929 F.M 972 (at F.M. 1105)
Walburg, Texas 78626
Office: (512) 863-
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Last Updated:
Jan. 1, 2026
St. Peter Lutheran Church at Walburg, Texas
2026 -
Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ Texas District
Do not remember the former things. Do not dwell on the things of the past. Look, I am about to do something new. Now it sprouts up. Do you not recognize it? Yes, I am about to make a road in the wilderness, waters in the desert.
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Christmas seems to have a million tunes, but New Year’s has but one: Auld Lang Syne. The phrase means “old long since” or “days long ago” in Scottish. The song is a confusing collection of gathered snippets pieced together by the poet Robert Burns. And though hard to follow, it is usually interpreted as the answer to a rhetorical question: Should the old times be forgotten? By no means.
It is interesting, when we think about it, that this is the tune associated with the change form one year to another. We would think we’d be ready for a new year. After all, many of us can think of things that happened in the past year that we’re glad to have gotten through: the illness scare, that extra expense, a stressful situation. Yet nostalgia doesn’t operate by the rules of memory. And nostalgia is what we think of when we sing Auld Lang Syne.
It is true that nostalgia can offer us comfort and connection with the past, but the dark side of nostalgia is when we start escaping into it. The prophet Isaiah warns the people of God ab out such simplistic escapism. He hears them talking about how wonderful things used to be back when they had first escaped from Egypt– conveniently forgetting that those very refugees from Egypt had looked back nostalgically to Egypt itself, slavery and all. Later, many centuries after Isaiah’s prophecy, people will hear the words of Jesus and long nostalgically for a king who will not free them form the tyranny of sin and death, but rather will bring back a mythical golden age that never existed in Isaiah’s day or indeed at any time.
We still face these same temptations today. We still yearn for the problems of yesteryear because we know what the solutions are, or we felt we were better able to deal with them, or, if nothing else, at least the problems were familiar. Yet Isaiah’s prophecy offers us hope. It does not end with condemnation for people tempted by nostalgia, but with a better vision of where hope actually is. The hope of the Christian does not lie in escapism to some golden age that never existed, but in the promise that God will be present with us, no matter where we are or what the new year brings.
If we’re looking for an old acquaintance worth remembering, God is the one we shall never forget, for He never forgets us, year after year.
In Christ,
Pastor Phil
Hope