I hope the first day of 2024 treated you well. Mine was productive…I was awake at 5, so I got up and went for a run before spending the rest of the morning in the garden, mowing, weeding, and landscaping. It feels good to be at the end of the first day of a new year and be able to point at what I’ve already achieved.

Many are less fortunate than me. From people who lost their homes and loved ones in floods in my home province last night, to the devastating earthquake in Japan just a few hours ago, 2024 is already shaping up to be a rotten year for some.

And yet…

As I reflected on the past year and looked ahead to the new one during the past couple of weeks, a word kept surfacing in my thoughts:

Hope

The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘hope’ as, ‘a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen,’ and, ‘a feeling of trust.’ It’s about feelings and desires. Basically, a wish. But that’s not the word that had anchored itself in my mind. The word I gradually become obsessed with is infinitely bigger than my wants.

Pondering this while pulling out weeds this morning I was reminded of the well-known passage in Jeremiah 29:11: ‘“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.‘

This is a passage that is often quoted out of context, so it’s important to fill in the blanks here. Jeremiah speaks this prophecy to the Israelites who’d been carried away in captivity by the Babylonians. They’ve lost everything, they’re in a strange country, and they feel their God has abandoned them. Looking at the state of the world at the moment, I can begin to imagine what they’re feeling.

God tells them to have hope, he will keep his promises, he will answer when they call. In the Bible, hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised. It’s not based in our feelings, but in God’s faithfulness.

Over the weekend, scrolling through my Facebook feed, I spotted part of the headline to an opinion piece on a news site I follow, Hope is a verb… Given my recent obsession with the word I took note of it, and thought it an interesting idea, but I didn’t click through to read it. Earlier today I went looking for it.

The article is very focused on the South African political landscape, but one part stood out:

“…hope is not a passive or evasive state but an active one. Hope is a state of doing. People draw hope from seeing others do things and make sacrifices for other people, and who therefore must still have hope themselves.”

Mark Heywood

In Jeremiah 29 the Israelites are anxious to go home, having been promised this by “prophets” among them. Through Jeremiah, God tells them to get comfortable in their new home, as they’re going to be there a while. But not as victims and outcasts, cynical and bitter about their lot. No, he tells them to show up and participate, to be good citizens and to pray for their new country as if it’s their own. And only then comes the promise in verse 11 and onward.

Hope is a verb. It’s not wishing. It’s doing. It’s showing up. It’s living in expectation of the change you want to see, and being part of that change. It doesn’t deny that bad stuff happens (that’s the wishing kind of hope), but it chooses to take action and do what you’re able to do to make things better, no matter how small.

That’s the word that’s been slowly invading my thoughts, that’s gradually changing my perspective, that’s making me want to do more, to have a bigger impact this year. To be a blessing because I’ve been blessed with much.

Instead of resolutions this year, I’m doing hope.

So I wish you a hope-filled 2024.