hallowed // 2023.

 2015: trust.

2016: healing.

2017: growth.

2018: discipline.

2019: new.

2020: rooted.

2021: release.

2022: see.

and this year?

2023: hallowed. 

(adj.) made holy; consecrated.

if it seems like a strange word, I thought so, too, when I was journaling and listening to Holy Spirit. other words kept coming to my mind (hidden, covered, surrounded) that made sense to what I’ve been hearing all year. but none of them seemed to fit, none were “it.” so, I continued to sit and wait.

all the words I’d thrown out and sifted through were the “what,” and I sensed in my spirit that I wasn’t seeing (aka our word from 2022) the bigger picture. I was looking to the “what,” but Holy Spirit was pulling me toward the “why.”

so, I sat a while longer (weeks longer) and it came to me while reading Matthew 6:

“Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’” (vs. 9‬-‭10‬)

we have cried so much and laid down so many fears this year as we’ve wrestled through hard diagnosis after hard diagnosis, heartbreaking growing pains, financial strain, and more. we have been candid about a lot of it, because every time we are ready to share the latest, something worse hits and we are back in the grief cycle again. grief has compounded this year, but so has joy (a miracle). the unimportant things fall away when your heart is crushed, and we have come back to the heart of worship in many ways.

so, when I read this prayer (that I have offered daily this year because I’ve struggled to pray with anything other than groans) this particular time, I stopped and circled back to a word I’ve muttered my whole life without much extra thought:

h a l l o w e d

after a minute, I scribbled this down in my journal: our trials and suffering will try to make us hollow, but He desires for us to be hallowed.

hallowed, not hollow. what a beautiful thought, a sacred prophecy over us.

I believe that is what God is inviting us into as we enter into a new year, a year that holds so much mystery and is already tempting with so much fear and sorrow. but we have a Hope that goes beyond what our eyes can see, an Anchor that keeps us secure even as waters rise and waves threaten to drown, a Strength that is made manifest in our weakness.

our only response: we receive it, Lord. we receive You, Lord. hallowed be Your name.