Some people come looking for these words at the end of a marriage. One person wrote on Reddit's r/Christian, "I am blue because this isn’t where I thought I’d be at almost 30. I miss having someone to hold and to laugh with and although the marriage was not good, it’s a somber feeling knowing that I’m starting all over again." Another, in a Reddit post on r/OpenChristian about coming back to faith, wrote "It’s been so long, I don’t know how to even talk to him anymore. I feel lost and unworthy." And on New Year's Eve, after their father died, someone on Reddit's r/GriefSupport wrote "I’m not ready to start a new one without him here." A beginning usually comes after an ending, and the passages below are for both kinds: the beginning you chose and the one nobody asked for.
If you only have a minute
A place to start
Romans 15:13, a prayer that hope be given, read over the first day of the new thing.
The verse most people mean
Isaiah 43:18-19, "I will do a new thing", first spoken to Israel in exile.
After a move you did not choose
Jeremiah 29:5-7, a letter telling exiles to build houses and plant gardens.
Beginning again with God
2 Corinthians 5:17, Ezekiel 36:26, Psalm 40:1-3 and Lamentations 3:22-23.
If the change is too much
The NHS says to see a GP, a family doctor, if you are struggling to cope.
Romans 15:13, a place to start
The passage Bible Nudge offers for hope is Romans 15:13:
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul closes a call to patient, welcoming community with a prayer that hope, joy and peace would overflow. Notice who does the filling. The verse asks God to give hope rather than telling anyone to produce it, so you can pray it over the new thing just as it is, whatever the day brings. Bible verses for hope in hard times reads it closely.
One way to use it is on the first morning of the new thing, whether that is a first shift, a first night in a new place or a first week on your own. Read the verse once as a prayer over that day. Then answer one question in a line: where do you most need hope to be given rather than generated?
The first morning somewhere new.
Isaiah 43:18-19, the verse most people mean
Yahweh speaks through Isaiah to Israel in exile, and a few lines earlier the chapter names Babylon outright:
Don’t remember the former things, and don’t consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. It springs out now. Don’t you know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
David Guzik at Enduring Word says Isaiah is speaking to Israel in "captivity and exile," and warns that people can "make an idol out of the ‘new’." Matthew Henry reads the passage as a new exodus. The USCCB introduction to Isaiah describes chapters 40 to 55 as addressed to the exiles. Notice where the new way is made: in the wilderness. The promise keeps the hard ground in view.
A beginning often starts with an ending
William Bridges, who wrote about life transitions, describes three stages: "Ending What Currently Is, The Neutral Zone and The New Beginning." He writes, "The starting point for dealing with transition is not the outcome but the endings that people have in leaving the old situation behind," and describes the middle stretch as a time when "the old is gone but the new isn't fully operational." It is a model, not a rule. The NHS adds that grief can follow "the end of a relationship," "losing a job," or "moving to a new place to live," which helps if you are surprised to be grieving a change you chose.
People in the Bible who began again
Most of them began after leaving or losing something. Abram is told, "Leave your country, and your relatives, and your father’s house," and Genesis 12:4 adds, "Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran." Naomi comes home from Moab after her husband and both sons have died, and says, "Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara; for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and Yahweh has brought me home again empty." She and Ruth reach Bethlehem "in the beginning of barley harvest" (Ruth 1:20-22).
Joshua takes over "after the death of Moses" and hears, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with you" (Joshua 1:1-9); Bible verses for courage reads that passage. Nehemiah inspects Jerusalem's broken walls and burned gates by night, and the people answer, "Let’s rise up and build" (Nehemiah 2:11-18).
Plant gardens and eat their fruit.
If you have moved somewhere you did not choose
Jeremiah's letter to the captives in Babylon is practical. "Build houses and dwell in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit," it says, and "Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to Yahweh for it" (Jeremiah 29:5-7). The famous verse comes a few lines later, and verse 10 comes first: "After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon." Only then does verse 11 speak of "thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future." Guzik at Enduring Word reads the promise on that longer timetable, with the captivity running its course first. Bible Nudge's hope topic set Jeremiah 29:11 aside as a first passage, and the hope post explains why.
Beginning again with God
Four passages use the word new, each in its own setting. 2 Corinthians 5:17, "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new," comes inside Paul's words about reconciliation, God "not reckoning to them their trespasses" (5:19). Ezekiel 36:26, "I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you," is spoken to the house of Israel, with a promise to gather them from the nations. Psalm 40 begins "I waited patiently for Yahweh" and, after the pit and the miry clay, says "He has put a new song in my mouth."
Lamentations 3:22-23, "They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness," sits inside a lament whose speaker has just said "I forgot prosperity." What the Bible says about suffering reads that chapter.
New Year, two ways
Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis found in their 2014 field studies that searches, gym visits and goal commitments rise after "temporal landmarks," including "the outset of a new week, month, year, or semester; a birthday; a holiday." The Reddit poster in r/GriefSupport saw the other side: "It’s the ‘new year, new you’ starting fresh and leave it behind mantra last year that bothers me." Both are true, for different people. If you are setting goals, Romans 15:13 can head the list; if you are dreading the date, Lamentations 3 remembers the loss before it speaks of mornings.
The same date lands differently for different people.
When God closes a door
Some readers have heard that when God closes a door he opens a window, and not all of them found it a comfort. A poem posted on Reddit's r/OCPoetry puts it this way: "maybe God closed a door and opened a window for you and that’s all fine and good but see / Most nights some are afraid that god closed a door and buried it six feet underneath." A commenter on Reddit's r/TrueChristian wrote, "Well, I don’t KNOW for certain that ‘God closed it’ because it might just be circumstantial". If your new start was forced on you by somebody else's wrong, the Catholic Catechism teaches that "God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil" (311). That is one tradition's teaching, and the passages above leave you free to call a harm done to you a harm.
When the change is more than you can manage
The NHS says, "See a GP if: you’re struggling to cope with stress, anxiety or a low mood," and a GP is a family doctor. Mind, a UK mental health charity, lists changing job, moving house and getting married among the major life changes after which some people experience depression. Samaritans names changes in circumstances "such as a separation, divorce or job loss" among life events "known to be associated with increased suicide risk." These are associations across many people, not a forecast for you.
Questions people ask
What is a good Bible verse for a new beginning card? Romans 15:13 works for a wedding, a new baby, a new job or a retirement, because it is a prayer for the person rather than a prediction. Isaiah 43:19 is the other common choice, and since it was first spoken to exiles it suits a hard start as well as a happy one.
Is Jeremiah 29:11 about my new job or move? It was addressed to the captives in Babylon, with the return set after seventy years. Many Christians still draw encouragement from it as a word about God's care for his people through a long, unchosen season.
Where to go next
If this change has brought thoughts of ending your life, please reach a person tonight. In the United States, call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Samaritans is on 116 123. Anywhere else, Find A Helpline lists lines by country.
On the first morning of the new thing, read Romans 15:13 with the verses around it once. If what you are carrying is something else, Bible Nudge can take a line about it in your own words and come back with one passage and what surrounds it. Find a passage.
Words that come up here
Tap a term to see what it means.
Exile. The time when many of Jerusalem's people were carried away captive to Babylon, the setting of Isaiah 40 to 55 and of Jeremiah's letter.