On Tuesday this past week, our Web development team met to discuss the future of UCG.org. Our website is currently ranked by Alexa as the tenth most popular Christian denomination website in the world. Our main developer, Tom Disher, is moving on to other employment in February, so we are currently seeking a person to fill this critical position.

What is Your Hope For 2020?

In our last Beyond Today subscriber letter, I asked our readers a question as we offered our newest booklet What Does the Bible Teach About Grace? The question was: What is your hope for 2020? I was not expecting many responses on the return coupon for the booklet request. Yet we received over 1,400 handwritten, heartfelt responses to this simple question. It was humbling and moving to read what our readers shared. They expressed their worries, anguish and fears. So many earnestly hoped that 2020 would bring them a better relationship with God and the people close to them.

Some longed to grow spiritually and to increase their faith. Others hoped they would see a turnabout in their health and finances. Many expressed a desire for world peace and no war, unity and for the return of Jesus Christ. Some asked for personal prayers on their behalf or for family members to find relief from addictions, troubled relationships, grief and the pain of depression.

While reading these many comments that arrived in within days of one another, I felt the pain of so many people around us who are hurting with nowhere to turn, or having only a tiny glimmer of optimism for their future. I could not help feeling a deep sorrow for them and wished that I could touch them and give them a loving, reassuring hug that there is a way through their pathos.

I would like to share a number of these comments as they represent a current snapshot of the people Beyond Today serves:

• I don't have any hope.
• To be closer to God.
• I lost my mother who was (my best friend late this past year) and I'm having a very hard time finding my way without her in this world. I would like to learn and turn to God for guidance and to ask Him to lead the way.
• My hope is to keep my faith through the rest of my terminal illness. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.
• My desire is to know God like He knows me. I want a closer relationship with Him and have more daily prayer and Bible reading.
• I need a spiritual breakthrough. My hopes and prayers for the new year 2020 are that I will continue to move forward with my struggles, and that everything that I have gone through or still going through settles. I want peace of mind!
• To be a better person and get closer to God. Quit using drugs and get my depression and anxiety under control.
• I hope to beat my depression and addiction so that I am not trapped by them anymore. My number one desire is to grow closer to Jesus so I can live out His will and not my own.
• That my marriage will heal and so will my health. I am tired of always being sick due to cancer and its side effects. I want to stop feeling like I am drowning.
• Peace in the world, no more wars nor fighting.
• My hope is for America and the rest of the world to come to know our Creator better.
• God's return to fix a broken world.
• More peace in the world. More unity in government. More help for the homeless.
• Healing, sanity, peace and compassion!
• That God will grant healing to my broken family
• I need prayers to get out of a very toxic relationship
• My daughter finds her way back to church
• To come to peace with the death of my Dad. It has been very hard on me.
• I pray that God will help me. I have no money and very little food. Pray that all the people in need have food.
• I pray to get out of debt. I need God's help.
• I hope to have my roof fixed so I can be warm. That's all.
• I hope my family can come back together. I hope my health gets better.
• That my body stays cancer free.

Do any of these comments resonate or ring true with you? Perhaps you have walked in similar difficult spaces of life and felt this heartache. Maybe these were—and maybe still are—some of your own hopes and prayers. If so, what can you do? Are you moved to be more empathetic and compassionate?

Jesus Christ came into a hurting world as well and exclaimed the following about His time:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Luke 4:18).

"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).

The work of God in proclaiming the gospel is one that includes the passion of Jesus Christ towards the hurting. As we speak, write and live out our lives, we should be aware of this, and offer hope to a broken world, both as a Church and individually.