2024-2025 Theme: WILD HOPE
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” ISAIAH 43:18-19, NIV
The wilds are unexpected places where the best things begin. Hope is often born in the wilds. Frequently in the Bible, the wilderness is where God transforms us, raises us as leaders, and prepares us to live passionately and with purpose.
It’s where God wrestles with Jacob and gives him a new name.
It’s where Moses is called to rise as a leader even though he feels inadequate.
It’s where Hagar is reminded that God sees her.
It’s where the nation of Israel was brought to prepare for the Promised Land.
It’s where David penned the Psalms.
It’s where God protects, provides for and prepares Elijah.
It’s where John the Baptist took on the moniker of “a voice calling the wilderness.”
It’s a testing-ground where Jesus faces off with temptation before his ministry began.
Audacious, unbridled purpose and possibility are found when we are willing to go through some discomfort to follow God to a new place. This is the message that came to God’s people who were exiled in Babylon. They were living in constant disappointment, corruption, division, and exhaustion, yet Isaiah’s words invite them to get passionate about their future. Babylon is not an end but a beginning. God was doing something new, but it was going to look different than they thought it would.