View to 2023

I am sorry to scare you but 2023 is now just around the corner. It is November and in less time than you think we are going to be back at the beginning of a new year. 

So, have you started making plans for the new year yet? Nicky and I have booked a holiday and here at church we have mapped out the preaching program and are working on the calendar. So what about you? What are your expectations and plans for 2023? 

Now, perhaps you are thinking, slow down Nigel, I haven’t even got Christmas sorted yet and 2023 is still a fair way off - and that would be a fair thing to say. But the decisions we make in the next two months will shape 2023 and I want to challenge you to make sure you are making future hope shaped decisions.    

I am reminded by Daniel Migliore in his book Faith Seeking Understanding, that the Christian life is not lived wandering from moment to moment. Rather, it is lived expectantly, because we know the shape of the future. We are eagerly awaiting the completion of the creative and redemptive activity of God. In the language of Scripture and Creed, Christians hope and pray for the coming of God's Kingdom (Matt 6:10), for the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting (Apostles' Creed), for a new heaven and a new earth (Rev 21:1) and for the final triumph of God over death and mourning, crying and pain and all the forces of evil (Rev 21:1-4).

Knowing the future ought to shape all our plans and dreams for 2023 and beyond. For our hope is not in what we can achieve in any year but in what Christ prepared for us at the cross. And we live in this hope responsively and reflexively making decisions about what we do and where we go and how we spend our time and resources in light of it.  

Christian hope is not limited to the fulfilment I can concoct in my individual life. Christian hope is not limited to fulfilment in this life at all. Indeed, Christian hope is best expressed by making God’s plans for the world known to the world by living them in and through our plans each day.  

Now to help us think about the practical application of all this, over the next 4 weeks in church we are going to lift our eyes to 2023 and start thinking about how to shape our future around the future. I will be sharing 4 short snippets to get you thinking and help you take action as you prepare for 2023. I’m looking forward to starting a conversation about 2023 so we might all more effectively grow as wholehearted disciples of Jesus.