For the last decade I’ve enjoyed choosing a word for the year instead of making New Year’s resolutions – amazing to think it’s been that many years. I’ve blogged about this topic a bit over the years if you’d like to read more, including how to discern your word with God.
I haven’t yet settled on my word for 2024. I think it will have a “re” at the beginning – some of the words I’m playing with are renew, restore, rejuvenate, recover, rejoice. My word last year was “renew” – I’m wondering about renewing renew as my word, as a friend commented! Shifting the narrative from having failed at the word in 2023 to renewing its place in my life. Hmm.
I’d love to hear your word, if you have one and feel able to share.
It’s a perennial question, and one that I explore in 7 Ways to Pray, my book coming out this autumn. Yesterday I had a delightful little experience of hearing God that helps in pondering how God speaks to his children.
Yesterday was a bit of a mess—and today will be too, I fear. I woke this morning and looked over to the clock but it wasn’t lit up, meaning that half of the house is without electricity. Including the hot water and heat (please do pray that we can get an electrician in to sort it out today!). Yesterday the electrics went out yesterday twice, and both times the desktop computer I was using died (but thankfully I didn’t lose too much work). Of course the wifi router is plugged into the half of the house shrouded in darkness. Then last night one of the kids’ beds broke, so we had to disassemble it and put the guest bed in there until we can get another one.
The hassles of life, right? We all know and experience them. But the timing for these hassles isn’t great as I need to submit the rewrites on my two books this week and next.
So in the backdrop of these distractions and the kids trying to stream online school with wifi that was going out and me being on a couple of video calls and also trying to make lots of progress on the rewriting, I wasn’t anticipating receiving from God my word for the year (a spiritual practice I write about here). But that’s what happened, to my delight. Hearing God can take us by surprise—we don’t control the experience but when we keep our ears and hearts open to God, we put ourselves in a position to receive.
I had an article published with Our Daily Bread yesterday, and thus was interacting on their website with the comments about the article. One of the comments was this:
My daughter felt God leading her to get a tattoo of the word ABIDE. The woman doing the tattoo asked what that meant and she was able to tell her redemption story! May Your children all abide in You, Lord. Let us tell Your story of love and grace! Amen.
As I replied I had a flash of insight:
Abide is such a good word. We abide in Christ; we abide in His word. Hmmm… thank you! Maybe this is to be my word for the year! I’m going to pray about that!
I asked God for confirmation, but I also sensed within a quick yes, abide is my word for 2021. It was a deep feeling of knowing that this was God’s answer. I hadn’t set out to hear God on this yesterday; it was his gift of love. But since the beginning of the year I have been expectant, wondering when God might answer my desire.
How do you communicate with God? Does my experience resonate with you?
One of the chapters in 7 Ways to Pray explores hearing God. I will be sharing more about the release of this book in my monthly newsletter. To receive it, click here.
We’re still enjoying our Christmas decorations during this season of Christmas. Are you? Painting by Leo Boucher. Used with permission; all rights reserved.
We have reached the final day of 2018. Many people will be grateful to leave behind this year with its acrimony, fear, tragedy, disappointment, and divisiveness. May we find greater unity and joy in 2019.
In the middle of this Christmas season of celebration, and battling a head cold, I lost track of the days and realized with a jolt that today was New Year’s Eve – and the end of 2018. In my blocked-up state I’ve been pondering a bit about my word for 2019 (#myoneword).
Some years ago I joined this movement that embraces a word
for the year instead of making a lot of resolutions that are forgotten after a
few weeks. Keeping one word before us – through a visual representation or a
reminder on our phone – can help us to stay focused on a word that helps us to
live as we wish with God. I usually choose a verse from Scripture to accompany
the word as well.
I’ve blogged about #myoneword previously – you can find all of the posts here. One post that might be helpful is how to hear God on your word for the year. My review of the book that started it all off, My One Word, is here.
The first year I tried out this practice I chose flourish, with Isaiah 55:10–11 as the verses:
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
I loved the idea of this word and all of its richness, but for
many months forgot about the practice. But in the late spring I remembered it,
and printed out some reminders of the word to keep it before me. As I was more intentional
about praying about how with God I could flourish, I started to get excited
about the possibilities. I saw the word as a promise from God – one that I
could forget and ignore, or one that I could embrace as I joined my hands in
his.
Other words have been train, with the
accompanying verse 2
Timothy 3:16 (about Scripture being God-breathed and useful for
training in righteousness); breathe, which
spoke to me about rest and breathing in the Spirit of God; present, with the lovely meanings of God’s presence, receiving the
present of God’s presence, and the need for me to stay present and in the
moment; and in 2018, replenish, with
the emphasis on resting and rejuvenating after a very busy couple of years.
As I mentioned above, I haven’t yet discerned what my word
will be for 2019. I need to set aside some time to think and pray about this – including
going for a walk, which I find is a wonderful way to ponder and pray and enjoy
creation.
How about you? Do you choose a word for the year? If so, how has the practice helped you? Do you have a word for 2019?
I enjoyed a replenishing time on retreat in February with the Sheldon community in Devon with walks in the countryside and time to try out a new type of writing. This quotation from Jeremiah 31:25.
My word for the year (#myoneword) has been replenish, which I chose following the exhaustion of writing books and completing an MA in Christian spirituality over a compressed period of time. This year has been for rest, but as we reach the end of it I wonder if I’ve fulfilled my creative hopes that bring life to my soul and refill the well. I’m not sure that I have, but perhaps I started at a very low deficit, being so tired that at times I felt that all I could do was binge-watch a television series. I would cycle between this kind of collapse and then scurrying to finish off my regular deadlines, such as my monthly articles for OurDaily Bread and running the Woman Alive book club, as well as writing other Bible reading notes, such as Inspiring Women Every Day.
But finally, in this last month of the year, I feel I have more energy for the creative projects that I love pursuing. To make way for them, however, I seem to need to declutter some of the gathered stuff that I didn’t sort out when I was so focused on writing and academic study. I have many more areas of the house to attack, but I’m pleased when I can attend to one, such as the weekend’s job of sorting through the computer table.
Okay, so we still have a lot of papers to sort through on the top shelf…
I really should have taken a “before” photo, for this large wooden-box-on-stilts was filled to the brim with stuff—Christmas boxes, papers galore, and an old computer that needed dumping. I’m thrilled to have it cleaned out. Now the working computer has a new home, releasing the dining-room table from its temporary captivity under said computer, and our daughter has a new workplace for the increased amount of homework she has with secondary school. Do you need to clear out before you can create?
I like being able to close the doors to the clutter!
I still have a long list of books to read, creative projects to make, and even Christmas cookies to start baking. But instead of seeing all of the things undone, I can rest in what I have been able to do, giving thanks for that clean dining-room table and tidy home for the computer. In a small way, this approach echoes the way we can embrace the incomplete nature the #myoneword experience over a year. I’m guessing that we probably will not have reached a perfect state of contentment with our progress on the particular word, but we may be farther along than we anticipated.
And so as you come to the end of 2018, might you take some time to consider how you’ve grown or where you’ve stagnated, particularly in the area related to your word for the year, if you’ve chosen one? As we reflect on how God has moved in and through us, we can give thanks for his grace in our lives.
Over to you: Did you choose a word for 2018? If so, what was it, and how did having that word before you shape you over the months?
