Wishful Thinking

The word "manifest" has been named Cambridge Dictionary's word of the year for 2024, after celebrities such as pop star Dua Lipa and gymnast Simone Biles spoke of “manifesting” their success.

The term, which has gained traction on TikTok, was looked up almost 130,000 times on the Cambridge Dictionary website this year. Its use widened greatly across all types of media due to events in 2024, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time.

Formerly, “manifest” was used very differently. For example, Chaucer used the oldest sense of the verb manifest: "to show something clearly, through signs or actions." The verb is still used frequently in this way. For example, people can manifest their dissatisfaction, or symptoms of an illness can manifest themselves.

However, in 2024 the term "to manifest" has evolved to be used in the sense of "to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen."

Dr. Sander van der Linden at Cambridge University, cautioned that the idea of manifesting success has no scientific validity.

Manifesting is what psychologists call “magical thinking” or the general illusion that specific mental rituals can change the world around us.

Manifesting gained tremendous popularity during the pandemic on TikTok with billions of views, including the popular 3-6-9 method which calls for writing down your wishes three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times before bed. This procedure promotes obsessive and compulsive behavior with no discernible benefits.

But can we really blame people for trying it, when prominent celebrities have been openly “manifesting” their success?

Manifesting wealth, love, and power can lead to unrealistic expectations and disappointment. Think of the dangerous idea that you can cure serious diseases simply by wishing them away.

However, it is crucial to understand the difference between the power of positive thinking involving effort and goal setting contrasted with moving reality with your mind. The former is healthy, whereas the latter is pseudoscience.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While wishing for something may be a natural human response, the Bible encourages a more proactive approach that combines faith, hope, and action. It emphasizes the importance of aligning our desires with God's will and taking steps to bring about positive change.

In CT magazine, author and podcaster Jen Wilkins writes:

It was a typical Friday night at the Wilkin house. A spontaneous dinner had collected a growing number of neighbors and friends. As the kitchen swelled with people and chatter, I leaned over to each of my kids and whispered the code they were probably expecting: “FHB.”

Family hold back. Maybe you know this strategy, too. Surveying the food relative to the guests, it became apparent that we needed a non-miraculous solution for our five loaves and two fishes. My husband prayed over the meal and then, quietly, the Wilkins slipped to the back of the line, serving themselves minimal portions to stretch the food. They knew they wouldn’t go without; it was not a matter of if they would eat but when. Worst case, we’d order a pizza once the guests had gone home.

Nobody wants to be at the end of the line. Given the choice, we want to go first, to get the full portion, to sit in the most comfortable chair. But Christ-followers understand that life is about more than doing what we want. It’s about doing what we wish. Let me explain.

We can all imagine times when we wanted to be treated better, when we longed for more care, recognition, and grace than we received from others. We are not wrong to hold these wishes. They illustrate the basic human need to be known, loved, and accepted. And what we do with how we feel about our wishes, met and unmet, will shape the course of our lives. To that end, Jesus invites us to live lives directed by wishful thinking, though not in the way we might anticipate: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12, ESV).

Put simply, Jesus tells us to do what we wish. Thinking about our own wish list, we then act accordingly toward others. We give the encouragement we wish we had received…and serve as we wish to be served. We step to the end of the line. We move to the least comfortable chair. We defer what we wish for ourselves and instead secure it for others.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Every day we look for ways to do what we wish others would do for us. It’s easier to take the smaller portion when you know the lack is only temporary. This world is flat-out starving for kindness and decency. It is ravenous for meaning and purpose, and we are just the family to invite them to the table. Do it as Christ did for you.

“Don’t worry, be happy,” is more than just a song lyric. A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging. A new study has found that being more optimistic appears to promote emotional well-being.

Studies have increasingly supported the idea of optimism as a resource that may promote good health and longevity. An 11-year study measured the optimism and pessimism of 2,267 men and women over 52 as they aged and found that those who died from coronary heart disease were more pessimistic than average. A Harvard study looking at nearly 7,000 older adults counted the most optimistic people as having a 73% reduced risk of heart failure over the follow-up period.

One researcher said, “Stress is known to have a negative impact on our health. So, by looking at whether optimistic people handle day-to-day stressors differently, our findings add to how optimism may promote good health.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God tells us that we will have negative, sometimes devastating, experiences in life (John 16:33). However, Scripture also promises that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38), that trouble is not random but refines us spiritually (2 Cor. 7:10; 1 Pet. 1:7), and that the peace of God can guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:4).

For decades the media in all its forms have created celebrities that are framed, groomed, and packaged solely for the purpose of dissemination through mass media. Many people, some living frustrated lives, live vicariously through the allegedly exciting lives of these glamorous personalities, representing hopes and dreams personally unfulfilled.

The result is that we have created synthetic celebrities whom we worship, however briefly, because they vicariously act out our noblest or basest desires. For impressionable young people, “celebrity worship syndrome” has resulted in:

Symptoms of depression and anxiety. Lower levels of critical thinking and cognitive abilities Impaired social skills. Maladaptive daydreaming that interferes with work, school, or relationships. Desire for fame, which is often linked with a lack of self-acceptance. Compulsive buying and materialism. Difficulties with romantic relationships.

In northeast Portland, Oregon, hope takes the form of a horse chestnut tree. It grows on the corner of Morris Street and 7th Avenue, and its branches are full of wishes. The tree grows on the property of Nicole Helprin, who first granted the tree its wishing status in 2013. Before leaving town, Helprin wrote out a few wishes and hung them on the tree, according to a story by a Portland news station. When she returned from her trip, the entire tree was covered in wishes like paper tinsel.

After that, Helprin posted instructions to the tree on a wooden clipboard. The note read, “This is a wishing tree. Please find a blank tag. Write your wish for you, a loved one, the neighborhood, etc.” Some wishes posted on the tree include, “I am wishing for … a year full of crepes,” “I wish for everlasting love,” “I wish for everyone to have what they need,” “I wish my dad was nice,” and “I wish to find my purpose and love for life again.”

Since then, the tree’s branches are never bare of wishes. The tree seems unaffected by its status as a stockpile of yearning. Sometimes, the tags blow off its branches and scatter around the neighborhood, perhaps an indication that they’ve just come true.

People of all ages scribble out desires, both public and private, and hang the tags on the tree in hopes that some greater power will fulfill them. But the majority seem to do with love--wishing for new love or longevity in the love they have. All the wishes are anonymous, making it easy to write something down and walk away.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Attributes of God; Love of God; Omniscience of God; Prayer to God – People have great longings and unmet needs but can only wish for fulfillment. The Christian has a loving Father in heaven who constantly hears our prayers and can do “far more than all we ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20-21).”

The marketing team at Lakeside Shopping Centre are accustomed to the difficulty of getting the attention of a fickle shopping public. But recently, they vowed to do the impossible.

As part of a Christmas promotion, Lakeside’s research indicated that 11 percent of area parents had at least one impossible-to-buy gift request from their children. They took stock of many of those requests (things like “a pencil that does my homework for me” or “a trampoline to the moon”), then tasked five prominent British inventors to solve one of these seemingly impossible requests. Their resulting creations will be part of a massive giveaway.

So if a child wants to become a LEGO figure, certified LEGO builder Duncan Titmarsh will be at the ready. Confectioners at Smith & Sinclair have designed a suite of Wonka-esque candies that taste like a holiday dinner. And seamstress Charlotte Denn created a dress that can, with the pull of a string, turn its wearer into a princess.

“It’s a lovely truth that children and even adults will sometimes put impossible gifts on their Christmas lists,” said marketing manager Ben Leeson. “At…Lakeside you’ll find all your Christmas presents – even the seemingly impossible ones.”

Potential Preaching Angles:

1) These inventions are impressive, but at Christmas God did something truly impossible—he became human, walked among us, and died for our sins. In doing so, he met the deepest need of our heart, a need much deeper than just a new toy or gift. 2) God's boundless divine creativity means even the things we seek that appear impossible are doable for him. Earthly acts of innovation or ingenuity are mere foreshadowing of God, who not only created the heavens and the earth, but will one day create a new heaven and a new earth.

The slum district of Manila is already overcrowded, but a gold rush has made it worse. It all started when 15-year-old Alfredo Gallo, who was combing the riverbed that runs through the Philippine capital, found a chunk of gold. His father immediately sold the nugget for about $500 and bought a television and a bicycle.

Once word got out, hundreds of people flocked to the banks of the filthy river looking for the precious metal.

Though the river is polluted and strewn with garbage, many people see it with new eyes. One village chief commented, "It is a puzzle. All we got from this before was trash."

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."

—Henry Ford (1863–1947)

Anything large enough for a wish to light upon is large enough to hang a prayer on.