MONDAY MORNING REFLECTIONS - NEW YEAR'S EVE RESOLUTIONS

 BY STEVE DUNN

It's Monday morning of New Year's Eve.  This is the day before we are supposed to fall off the fiscal cliff. I suspect we will hit January 1st without any resolution.

Speaking of resolutions, many people are taking some time right now crafting some.  Last year I wrote that I had long since stopped making resolutions. IT'S ABOUT TO BE A NEW YEAR. What I offered last year was this observation:"What I look for more in a new year is to see the rhythm that will be required to live it in a healthy and fruitful manner.  Life has its seasons, as I am beginning discover as I approach my sixty-first year and actually begin contemplating how to finish well in my calling as a pastor."

Well, I've spent a year doing just that and it was really more of a test than I had anticipated.  A sabbatical, a bout with pneumonia, re-entry to my pastorate and then the decision that the church needed a new kind of leader for the season that it was in.  And then five months when I was not pastoring--instead selling a house, going on the road for the Bridgebuilders Seminars, teaching a seminary class, doing some consulting for a church, and a personal exploration that led to committing to a ministry of being an Intentional Interim Pastor.  Which was then followed by the season I am now in of awaiting this first assignment and living primarily off the proceeds of the house sale.  In those months we have called four different locations home. Did I mention adding a CPAP machine to my life?

The best rhythm I have come up with is how the pack and repack for each new temporary home, and learning how many of the possessions I have had in storage since September that I can actually do without.

But maybe that's my lesson for the year -- or one of them:

Sometimes living can only be day by day.

Challenges need to be faced like the challenge of eating an elephant--one bite at a time.

Possessions possess you and when you don't have so many to trip over you actually have time to enjoy your relationships.

A good wife is the best gift a man can have,

God's timing is never ours.

When God guides, He also provides.

2012 has been an interesting year.  I have absolutely no idea what 2013 will look like, but I know that the year and I both are in the hands of the One Who does.

In case, this did not speak to you--maybe these cartoons will.