Behold 2024, there is beauty for us all here

​God talks to all of us. That is God's choice and not ours.

Hearing God and listening to God, however, that is only our choice.

In an advent series I recently wrote, I reflected on the word BEHOLD. I said it is used between 600 and 1,500 times in the bible, depending on the translation you're reading. I noted that when you see the word behold, something big is about to happen.

A big message or a big experience or a big opportunity.

It got me to wondering, as we head into the new year, how many things in my life have I missed out on because I didn't behold the signals that were inviting me to experience them? Things I longed for and things I had no idea I could or should be longing for.

The more I wondered, the more I became sure my word for 2024 will be BEHOLD.

You see, the God who talks to me doesn't use the traditional communication platforms that you and I use. Maybe that's a good thing since you and I quite frequently butcher communication.

God created us to receive 90% of our communication through the way we interpret the things we sense and feel and not through the words we hear. Much of what we understand about one another is what we sense and feel in each other's presence, not what we read or hear each other say.

That's why presence is SO important for any deep and meaningful connection.

Since I can't actually hear God's voice, some might believe I am not available to God's direction. But this dismisses ALL the ways God has at his disposal to help me sense and feel and understand what he's trying to tell me.

Trying to invite me into.

It dismisses all the ways God is asking me to observe and understand and appreciate the world around me and the world inside me.

Which is at the heart of me choosing to embrace the word BEHOLD in 2024. It's my commitment to observe and understand and appreciate as much of my inner and outer worlds as possible. To behold them with a desire to receive every big thing God might have in store for me.

In her song I Don't Want to Miss a Thing, Elle Holcombe says:

Your voice is a burning bush
Your voice is a million things
Your voice is the sound of thundering hooves
Your voice is hummingbird's wings

Too often, I don't behold the message being delivered by the hummingbird's wings.

Too often, I don't behold the message being delivered by a friend's eyes watering up or a smile breaking through in a chat at a local coffee house.

Too often, I don't behold the message being sent by my own heart racing or by my breath quickening or by the sudden onset of sadness.

Too often, as I race past a simple moment in life while chasing my next BIG moment, I don't behold the grand message being delivered through the simple.

The message that the largest voice in the world isn't heard, it is observed and understood and appreciated. The message that the largest voice in the world can't be heard through a phone to my ear while racing through the airport.

It isn't even a voice that comes to me. It's a voice that draws me to it.

A voice that draws me to it and begs me to stop and behold, to be still and know, that much of what I see and sense and feel is much more that what I see and sense and feel.

It is an invitation. An invitation to dig deeper than the superficial conversations we too often have with one another. To dig deeper and discover, something big is about to happen here.

I believe something big is waiting on us all in 2024. Let's not miss the invitations to receive our big while chasing our big.

Stop and observe and understand and appreciate, my friends.

There is so much beauty in store for all of us here.

BEHOLD 2024.