increase
I’ve always found it to be a good practice — articulating a theme that anchors my story for the year.
More recently I’ve resisted the urge to manufacture an overlay for my experiences — between some traumatic events and creative fatigue ‘my word for the year’ hasn’t been something I’ve pursued.
After a few years of allowing my year to just ‘be’, I’ve been surprised at the emergence of a word for 2025.
Increase.
And it’s against all odds. Yes, cost of living crisis. Yes, I’m super-cautious about empty notions of prosperity (partly because of my conservative theological lineage, and partly because I’m Australian and default to suspicion or envy at someone else’s success story - aka tall-poppy syndrome). And yes, because I’m noticing a slow decline in the funding model I’ve been existing in.
Increase as an expectation of 2025 is completely counter-intuitive.
And yet I cannot shake the call to anticipate more. A number of 2024 markers deepen my resolve to initiate and lead in 2025:
- In my stewardship of our story that informs the Resolute Love Project
- In my longing to see others deepen their faith experience through the SoulWalk Project
As I think about each of these projects, they may be embryonic in size, but they are all filled with rich possibility. Possibility that stands as a rebuke to my tendency to play them down — why should my insecurity stand in the way of potential bearing the fruit it promises?
So, I offer the word INCREASE as my word for 2025. Not because of wishful thinking or misguided triumphalism, but because I happen to believe in the potential of the seeds being planted.
And I do take responsibility for the part I might play in seeing this increase emerge, but I’m reminded that I cannot take responsibility for the miracle of growth against the odds.
“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6)
“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)
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