Welcome 2017

Just a line to greet you as the year has turned.  I guess optimists face 2017 optimistically and pessimists pessimistically with many of us probably wanting to identify as centrist realists.  For me, one expression has jumped out from Zechariah 9:12 (NLT)
Return to your fortress,
O you prisoners of hope;
even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.

Prisoners of hope!  Christians are in the extraordinarily paradoxical situation of being caught up, trapped, in God's bigger kingdom purpose which does not remove the troubles, grief and despair of the human condition (which sadly continues in this fallen world) but which empowers cosmic conviction that 'Our God Reigns!'

Omid Safi sums it up well in his blog 'On Being':
Hope is powerful. Hope is different. It is more, much more, than mere optimism.
Optimism is ultimately about optics, about how we see the world. It’s about seeing the glass half-full.
Hope is different. Hope is a cosmic quality. Hope is rooted in faith, with feet mired in suffering. Hope is a heart in agony that yearns for liberation.
Hope is tied not to how we see the world, but to the faith we have in how the world actually is and will be.
Hope is not about seeing the world, but about the heart behind the eye, the soul that sees.
Hope is not a choice. Hope is not optics. Hope is not mere politics. We are wrapped up in hope. Caught up in hope. Imprisoned in hope.
Return to your fortress,
O you prisoners of hope.
We hope in the moral goodness of the universe. We hope in the goodness of God. We hope in the victory of good over evil.
Welcome 2017!