Hopes and Expectations for 2024
Happy New Year!
We are a few weeks in now but given this is my first newsletter for the year I thought it was still appropriate!
So what are your expectations for 2024? I am not a big fan of New Year's resolutions, but I do have expectations and hopes. I expect and hope to get more reading done in 2024. I expect and hope to exercise more often. I expect and hope to grow as a Christian. I expect and hope and pray to see God at work in our church.
As the New Year begins and we carry into it our hopes and expectations, I am reminded by Daniel Migliore in his book "Faith Seeking Understanding", that the Christian faith is an expectant faith. It eagerly awaits 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).
As I pondered this I noted the difference between earthly expectations and heavenly ones. My friends who are unbelievers are all expecting 2024 to contain new opportunities focussed on the here and now and often focussed on themselves. It’s all quite contained.
By contrast, Christian hope is not limited to the fulfilment of our own individual desires and nor is Christian hope limited to this life. Christian hope lifts its eyes to the eternal and glorious.
Christian hope insists that personal and communal fulfilment are inseparable and that life now prepares us for life eternal. Christians thus work and hope in community together for the transformation of life both now and eternally. When by grace we rise above our own egocentricity, we realise that there can be no real life outside of relationships with others and that following Jesus must transform those relationships as much as it transforms ourselves as individuals. And that all we do now, impacts our experience of then. And all this ought to shapes what we hope the year might bring.
At the centre of all this is the cross and from there flow love, forgiveness, reconciliation and partnership. These things do not terminate in the individual but flow forth like a transforming stream that will impact everyone and everything around us. They must flow in such a way as to create an eternal impact as Jesus is shared with all those around us.
Additionally, as we live in this hope, there is no guarantee of quick or easy success. Christian hope remembers that Christ was crucified, that he suffered and that he did so willingly. It is in this sense that Christian hope takes a truly cruciform shape.
So what are your expectations for 2024? Are they small, temporal and individual? Are they big, eternal and communal? Are they earthly or will they endure forever?
Let’s lift our eyes to all God has in store for us, now and forever more. Amen.
