By Brian Shiner

I wrote a good friend who always chooses a “word for the year”. She shared that her word for 2024 is “Seek”.

She wrote me this: “I need to seek what the Lord has for me next; to seek to understand; to seek to be empathetic, etc. Hummingbirds are my reminder to keep seeking.” 

What a great word and great image. Can’t you see that industrious hummingbird with his crimson breast and green and gold wings flitting flower to flower seeking the next bit of delicious nectar? 

My word for 2024 is “WAY”.

Images abound: our stone walkway to the street, the various “ways” I take getting to a meeting or to my office.

The Bible uses “way” or “path” interchangeably. Like my images, the words can refer to an actual way or path. Or the conveyance on that way, walking, riding, driving. But mostly, they focus on the heart or attitude with which I journey. Jesus challenges me to take the narrow way, so, I follow Him. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” Isaiah wrote. “Make straight His paths.” And John the Baptist and Jesus let me know, Isaiah meant I must repent when on a wrong “way”.

Regarding a spiritual or interior way, Scripture knows only of two: a righteous or a wicked way. The blessed man does not “stand in the way of sinners” Psalm 1 tells us. 

Jesus said “I am the Way…”  (Jn 14:6). And early Christians called themselves followers of The Way. These same followers on that way were first called “Christians” at Antioch (Acts 11:26). That meant “little Christs.”

Does that ever shake you up? To be termed a little Christ meant they behaved like Jesus. Their lives echoed Jesus as they walked the way. 

So, the word way is a high calling for 2024. I pray I can live into it this year.

I will pray day by day: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me, and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).