Hope Deferred

                                                        Picture Credit: AI

In the aftermath of Christmas and the passing of another calendar year, a common practice is to throw ourselves with renewed vigour into changing certain aspects of our lives. Better diets and more exercise are surely the favourite resolutions, but even as early as today, the struggle to commit can be real. Perhaps your desire for change lies elsewhere – for members of this group, it could be faith or writing-related? Then again, if past resolutions have ended badly, you may be reluctant to set yourself up for failure again.

My January social media feeds are full of people ‘smashing it’ - modern parlance for ‘doing great’. Lifelong couch potatoes are running ultra-marathons. People who only recently picked up a pen are knocking out bestsellers. These usually sit alongside a plug for the services of an expert who can help me ‘smash it’ too - for a fee, naturally. I’m awash with offers to part with my money to people who guarantee to improve my writing or get me published with ease. Candidly, my experience this year of paying for help has been deeply frustrating, so I feel a little burnt and unsure about my next steps. I’ll spare you the details, but as the year ended, the disappointment of this weighed heavily on me when I realised the plans I made in 2025 to progress towards publication by 2026 had failed.

Disappointments shouldn’t surprise us - God’s word warns us about this in Proverbs 13 v12 - ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick’. Even as I write this, though, the heaviness of disappointment is being overturned by the lightness of hope, and I remember the whole of verse 12 - ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.’

The process of writing most certainly involves a great deal of deferred hope - there is little in the way of instant gratification. So, here’s to all of you resisting change because of past disappointment - may your hope be in the one who never fails, and may we encourage each other towards our goals.