A New Year Dawning: Further Up and Further In!

Jan 1, 2026 | EVENTS, REFLECTIONS

Merry Christmastide and Happy New Year’s Eve to you and yours!

Greetings, friends!
I was thinking today about the fact that 2025 was probably the hardest year of our married life in terms of challenges that Rachel and I have traversed, in God’s providence and in His company. But yet, it was a year of wonderful, priceless gifts as well. It’s amazing how those two things can travel in time together.

Magnalia Homestead & Farm averaged about 200 guests per month in 2025. We try not to think much about that number – the thought of it exhausts us! Along the way we were able to share the gospel and experience something of gospel life with people from every background imaginable. What a privilege.

The Homesteader’s Life is a humbling one. We try to laugh when we do stupid things (or else we might cry or get mad). We’ve made progress in many respects:

  • We’ve learned not to put eggs we gather while doing other chores into our pockets;
  • We’ve learned to count in pennies the livestock feed we spill (or that our cows spill as they eat like a cow);
  • We’ve learned the importance of neighbors who know more than us;
  • We’ve learned that milking a cow is not for the faint of heart;
  • We’ve learned that meals matter, and that they can be relational instead of just transactional;
  • We’ve learned about construction entropy: the law of the universe that makes building projects take longer and cost more;
  • We’ve learned that water running across new clearings and pastures has a mischievous mind all its own;
  • We’ve learned to watch where we walk; and
  • We’ve learned that 50 and 80lb sacks of grain and hay bales get heavier each passing year….

Add to the Homesteader’s Life the idea of re-creating a sort of Parish Village that fires anew a sense of communal and personal imagination connecting “history, literature and the theology behind it all” through a cadence of weekly community meals, guest overnights, events and educational experiences on the farm — and it’s very clear that we’re over our heads.

Yet in just the past two months, we’ve had deep conversations with FOUR guests who’ve stayed with us, each planning with their families similar, Magnalia-inspired homestead visions: each reflecting a similar Theology of Place, each in a different state. What might the fruit of that be? Another person wrote that the goal might include the spiritual formation of people who are swimming against the current of the world:

They will read books, listen to music, host dinners, be involved in their church, get to know their neighbors, learn new skills, start new hobbies, do things outside. They will foster faith and charity, discipline and virtue, and the life of the mind for the good of the world. They will seek the common good in their local communities. And they will pass all of these things on to their children and grandchildren.

We’ve always prayed – whatever God might do here – that our Homestead would not become a destination but instead a kind of prism. We’ve asked the Lord to take a beam of gospel light and reflect and refract it through this place into the unique colors of faithful expression through other people in our community and communities near and far. We praise God for the thought of this happening!

In December of 2025, we asked you to help bring Narnia House to life. Thanks in no small part to generosity from many of you, it has welcomed guests from all parts of the world since May. We also opened “The Treehouse Bungalow,” a residential loft over the Pole Barn. These improvements have enabled us to activate a retreat model here, which we’ve prayerfully envisioned for years. Surrounding Narnia House, “The Sedwick Parish Village” (as we call it) now includes The Scottish Gate and sheep yard, the 22-box community garden and Crown & Pepper Garden Shoppe, The Village Blacksmith Shoppe, Walden Cabin (and pond), the Hessed Hitching Posts, Ebeneezer Creek, the sandpit, a trail of bluebird boxes, stands of blueberry and figs, a butterfly garden – and a pickleball court as well. It’s a CALL TO COMMUNITY in an age of atomization.

In 2026, we are focusing programmatically on expanding our work-study residency programs with partners ranging from The C.S. Lewis Institute to Young Life UK. Initially focused on young men in a gap year window, they will be vocationally mentored and apprenticed and work through assigned readings in the classics and theology while experiencing life in community – and work on the farm.

Our property development focus in 2026 will be on The Western Front of Magnalia’s 12 acres, especially The Hobbit-hole Inn and the adjacent natural amphitheater. We envision regular events there featuring musicians, poets, preachers and orators, as well as farm markets and more. You can read all about it and join in with that effort here.

We’re writing this last day of the year to invite your continuing partnership with us as we endeavor to create an unusual and impactful beacon for gospel-centered community here. If you feel we are advancing our mission in earnest, and that Magnalia’s mission is aligned with your mission in the world, please consider helping us to create a “home away from home” and a beacon of gospel life and love at Magnalia Homestead & Farm. The budgets for this work and the donations needed to enable it are not light, as we set ourselves to creating infrastructure and special places for generational, life-on-life ministry to happen in the context of Christian community.

There are five ways to join in as a financial partner with what God’s doing here at Magnalia Homestead & Farm:

Lastly, please let us know how we can serve you and yours in the New Year! Can we pray alongside you? Can we host someone from your family, or a friend, or from your place of work, who might be blessed by some soul-care hospitality? Can we provide a community garden box for someone who would be blessed by that? Can we offer space for you to host a gathering? Can we invite you out for a hike, for forest bathing, or an afternoon of cabin reading?

Our family and ministry team would be honored to serve you in these ways (or in other ways you share with us). May 2026, in the Lord’s providence, be your best year ever!

With love and affection,
Jim, Rachel, Eddie + Team Magnalia

 

P.S. In a year of much stock appreciation, some donors have made a stock gift to Magnalia Foundation, which enables the ministry to receive the full appreciated value without capital gains tax implications for you as a donor. It’s a win-win!

 

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