As it is December 30th and tomorrow is the last day of 2025, I’ve been doing my annual reflecting. I love this practice. There is something soothing, invigorating, and sobering about looking back at the year as it plays its final notes, gleaning what I can from the last 356 days. Not just gleaning, but celebrating, mourning, and savoring the parts I wish I could rewind and play again. In a sense, this period of reflection is me playing it again. I cull through the photos and videos, flip back in my journal, and slow down to remember everything that happened.
The last couple weeks, I’ve had an overwhelming sense of gratitude and anticipation for the New Year. For most of my life, I’ve relished the idea of a fresh start, a reset, a new breath of crisp air. But this year the feeling’s been stronger than usual. I have been more enthusiastic – and this morning, sitting here at the kitchen table sipping my coffee and eating my bagel, I finally realize why.
The joy of last New Year was ripped away with a massive fire.
A fledging hope for 2025 was stifled as flames cascaded through the city I love and live in.
No wonder I’m feeling more excitement this year – last year’s was short-lived. The wind knocked from our sails, tragedy knocking down the door, reality more intense than we imagined. There was no soft time at the start of 2025. There was fire.
On Sunday, my friend and I had lunch after church. She mentioned how annoyed she gets when we sing songs at church about wanting to be “tried by fire.” I can still hear her now: Do people even know what they’re asking for?! Trial by fire is Biblical, but asking for it when it’s not already happening in your life is on another level – it sounds very holy and fervent, but do we really know what we’re inviting into our lives, singing that sentiment?
It makes me think of something a pastor once said during a service when I was a kid: Don’t pray for patience unless you’re already in a season that requires it. Ha! It was funny at the time, but I also understand what he meant on a deeper level. God will answer, and it may not be in the way we’re expecting. To my friend’s point of frustration – you never know what your fire will be, so don’t be surprised if you get more than you bargain for. Not that it isn’t worth it (it is) but God’s ways are not our ways… so… buckle up, I guess. It’s refining fire.
Fire purifies precious metals. This idea is used as a metaphor several times in the Bible (Proverbs 17:3, 1 Peter 1:6-7, and Zechariah 13:9, just to list a few). So it goes with our lives as we walk with Jesus. Trials are used to refine us.
I experienced that this year. It was a wonderful year that also included an ample dose of fire – both literally and figuratively. I turned 30 (more writing on that coming at a later date, I can assure you), saw new parts of the world, worked jobs I loved, and entered a new season of reliance on God. People died, babies were born, illnesses were diagnosed, friends were made. And through it all, I’ve experienced a nearness of God in a way I don’t think I had before. The refining fire of 2025 did something in me, and if that’s not proof of God’s love, I don’t know what is.
Maybe starting the New Year with fire isn’t such a bad thing after all – a refining fire, that is. Keep Los Angeles in your prayers. Families and businesses will be recovering from the 2025 fires for years to come.
For me, at least, there is gratitude for the refining fire this last year brought. I’m not sure I could have said that while I was in the hottest moments of it, but looking back, I see it more clearly. It strips away that which isn’t lasting. It creates clarity and focus on what is good. And call me crazy, but my soul feels richer and more alive than ever before, even after a year of such hot flames.
Let’s see what 2026 brings, shall we?
Alexa Babin 
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