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Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Taking Stock, Moving On
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13; Matthew 25:31-46
How do you make and keep a good new year's resolution? Pastor Jack finds both practical advice and spiritual encouragement in this week's Bible passages.
Listen to the GODblog!
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I'd be willing to bet money that one of the most common new year's resolutions (if made on New Year's Day) is, "I'll never do that again!"
In any case, it's a natural impulse on such a landmark day to stop, take stock, and decide where we want to go from here with our lives.
An old hymn says, "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I've come; and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home." Well, what the heck is an Ebenezer?! (Tip: This song is not about Scrooge.)
Fact is, that's the name of a stone monument the judge Samuel erected at the place where he won an important battle. He did it to honor God's protection that far, and to promise he'd follow God faithfully the rest of the way. (See 1 Samuel 7:12)
Let's you and I, at this time of new beginnings, follow in his steps. Let's take stock of our life journey so far, and get our bearings on where to move on to from here.
Sociologist Tony Campolo reports on a survey taken among fifty people over the age of ninety, who were asked, "If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?"
Three basic answers converged at the top of the list:
1. I would reflect more.
2. I would risk more.
3. I would do more things that would live on after I died.
I invite you to join me in applying those three goals in our own lives during 2006.
1. Let's set aside our busy work at regular intervals, to evaluate what our various tasks really mean, to notice just where they're taking us. And to consider what God might think about it all.
2. Let's take chances now and then, to see what God might do with our willing hands and minds to make a real difference in our world.
3. Let's keep eternity's values in view as we decide what's worth doing, when and how to do it best. And whether its effects are what we really want to be remembered for as God's people in this time and place.
Here's another, more serious tip: Experts say that a new year's resolution, put into practice every day, turns into a habit in twenty-one days. When you've done it day by day for six months, it's become a part of your personality.
Imagine these three simple principles as a whole new lifestyle... To have it be second-nature for us to tune in to God's wavelength, to take the chance that God might use us for something good, to leave a good legacy that keeps on going even when we're long gone.
Happy new year! Happy new life!
P.S. Thanks to Steve Goodier's Life Support System newsletter for the survey story.
posted by Jack Buckley at
4:48 PM
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