What's OnMy Mind

Always Hoping "This Will Be The Year"

As the weeks turn to days leading up to New Year’s Eve, the talk turns to hopes that “this next year will be better than the last. Our dashed dreams and shattered wishes of 2024 inspire us to imagine new ones, better and bigger ones, with more commitment to follow through “this year!”

As 2024 phases out and 2025 slowly approaches like a fog bank over a warm body of water, it’s easy to fantasize about what’s ahead.

Why do we do that? All we must do is remember 12 months ago and the disappointments of that year. What makes us think and dream, that this new year will indeed be better?

Hope.

It’s a small word with huge implications. And the variance of those implications ranges from hoping for a new job to hoping the cancer miraculously leaves the body.

Hope.

Google says hope is “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” That’s true, of course. But where’s the confidence? This type of hope is nothing more than a wish when you blow out candles on the cake.

Hope.

Hope comes from the Bible, one of the oldest, and most popular books in all our history. The entire publication is filled with hope. Maybe that’s why it’s still the best seller of all time. Perhaps the stories of victory and overcoming adversity and people being healed, even being brought back to life (Lazarus and Jesus), give readers hope. Trusting that blind people could see again, and crippled people walked again…that’s what true hope is. It’s knowing something can happen before it does. Jesus offers that hope. That’s why, year after year, we still say, “Maybe this will be the year.”

Here’s a mantra for 2025:

May the God of hope ll you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s found in Romans 15:13. (NIV)

One other that’s helped me over the years of adversity is: Romans 12:12, Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. (NIV)

One of my new favorite promises

He [God] will once again fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy. Job 8:21