You know I like to begin with gratitude, because gratitude reminds us of the good work God is already doing among us. 

Thank you for your faithfulness in the care and support of the immigrant communities and persons facing the loss of due process during ICE’s visit to the deep-dish city. Thank you for the courageous resistance to injustice I see as you live out your baptisms.

Thank you for the gutsy commitment to you who are being trained to turn around ministries. Thank you to you who have said yes to taking a test to see if you might be wired to be a church planter.

Thank you to the countless people who have stepped into the challenges of paying apportionments and leaving us ahead of where we were in the past years. Thank you to the many SPRCs who have created safe and supportive environments for our immigrant clergy in a moment when vile things are being said about and done to immigrant communities.

Thank you for your gifts to the Emergency Solidarity Fund, which is helping immigrant communities whose work has been interrupted by the dynamics at play now. (See p. 6 for more information about the fund. ) Thank you for those of you retired clergy who have stepped into supportive roles. 
    Thank you to you who mentor or work for our board of ministry as it credentials and supports vocational promptings. Thank you who have stood in important moments while we grieve. Thank you to those leading anti-racism work that will be our healing. Thank you for your faithfulness. I am humbled and grateful to be in ministry with you. 
   The prophets seized on a powerful image for God’s people, that of a remnant, a small, scrappy group living faithfully amid the moral incongruence of empire. 
    I don’t know what your experience of a remnant is, but I first learned this word from my great grandma Rosy. She never threw away a dress or shirt that could be used again. She made beautiful quilts from the remnants, all the little squares that look useless, too small to be of any value, something someone might throw away, became useful. 
    According to the prophets, a remnant in God’s hands can be useful! In God’s hands, the remnant can quickly become something new.  
    Yes, our churches are smaller, turning toward innovation, but we are not too small to steward the moral imagination of Jesus. We are not too small to feed or advocate. We are not too small to bear witness to interfaith and ecumenical bonds. We are not too small to practice hope. 
    You have heard me say that time is fractured now. We cannot cast vision across easy years of certainty; we don’t know enough to plan what will be needed five years from now. 
    In this fractured time, no one knows what life will be like in two months or two years. So, for this moment of rising prices, food insecurity, immigrant backlash, and innovation that may frighten some, I would invite us to pray and consider how 2026 could be a year of practicing hope. 
    For this moment, we need to be clear to the world about the hope we have in Christ. I believe we will innovate better and bear witness more resolutely if we are people of hope. We may be smaller than we once were, but I believe we are not too small to steward the moral imagination of Jesus. 
    I believe hope is an outpouring of God’s creative freedom at play in each moment. I believe hope knows the present is held with a comma, and that God’s word is always breaking in for the common good.   
    “Practicing Hope” will be our theme at the 2026 annual conference. Last year our guests and speakers remarked to me what a great spirit this group has. Yes! I see it every day I witness your ministry. 
    How is your congregation practicing hope? How is your yes to Jesus not just hope on a shelf but a regular practice, a growth in love that practices hope?