The day does seem like any other Sunday except I didn’t get much sleep last night (no, not from hard partying) so feels a bit dragging. But we had a very sweet Lord’s Table with a sincere appreciation of our Lord’s love and sacrifice and command. We also received a good word centering on everyone’s most relatable disciple, Peter.

So why are we still here in 2023? 23 years have passed following Y2K when we thought there was a distinct possibility that anything electronically driven was going kaput when the digits turned from 99 to 00. The IT industry cashed in on the fear of Y2K as programmers raced against time to fix the unknown problem. The entire scenario ended us being the ultimate nothing-burger. We did not need to fear the zeros.

But here we are 23 years later. Is there an appropriate word to describe or encapsulate what we anticipate for these next 365. Perhaps uncertainty is fitting to describe life now more so than in 1999. We are living in the days of the triple threat. The novel corona virus is miserably no longer a novelty and it’s various emerging iterations and sub-strains will likely become endemic. We are still taking our best guesses at which strain of the influenza virus will be the hit of this season. And infant and small children are catching the RSV at an alarming rate. It’s been around but we are hearing of it only now. It seems that there is this changing menu of hot infections akin to the soup du jour at the local diner.

Then besides the threat of infection, there is now the real possibility of a nuclear weapon being deployed as well as several volcanos erupting one after another along the Pacific ring of fire. Is an eruption in North America and/or a nuclear warhead launching inevitable sometime this year? So is the word of the year inevitable?

No. As for me, the word for 2023 will be promise.

Several years ago, Luann or Christine and company came up with this thing that we should choose a word for the upcoming year. We haven’t kept up this contemplation and Luann asked me yesterday if I had a word for this year. And promise arose in my heart.

What is your word? Write it in the comments below.