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We are a week into the new year and the goals or resolutions many of us choose to make this new year better. Some of the goals are about health, others about finances, and others about some area of personal growth. Perhaps we want to grow our relational skills and relationships or maybe there are spiritual or educational things on our list. Many of us follow this habit year by year, but too often our targets are great but our skills in aiming for them not very good. We may miss the real asset is disciplining ourselves to develop habits we know we need or want to have. We know intention is good but doesn’t count.

Discipline does not come easily. Sometimes we just are not willing to put in the work or give up what we prefer doing. Other times we start out well but life turns a corner we did not expect and it interrupts us. In those cases we often become discouraged and may decide to give up because it is just too hard and we don’t have the energy. 

Life just doesn’t go the way we want many times and it’s paradoxical that it takes us a long time to see interruptions or the unexpected glitch are a part of this thing called living. Maybe it should also remind us that although we have choices and responsibilities for those, we are not in control of many aspects of our lives or life that swirls around us. We may try to eat healthy and exercise, develop healthy sleep habits, and still we get sick. We are diligent in our job (whatever it may be) and yet we still may lose that job when the business downsizes or the economy ends our position. The list goes on and on as you might guess.

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You may not be a person who is prone to trying to control your universe but if something interferes with a plan that means a lot to you, things go awry and you are thrown into a funk.

I can check many of these things I have listed and it seems that certain seasons are harder than others where the best laid plans don’t go as we wish. New parents and newly married couples may be on this list and the later seasons of life bring that as well. These unwanted interruptions test us and reveal what matters most to us. They develop our character unless we allow them to crush us because we can’t have our way.

Even so, we are merit driven beings and keep trying to learn and understand how to make things work more perfectly or more closely to what we deem is successful. We renew our belief we can figure this out when a new year and a year of blank pages begin. But usually the pages are already not blank. Important events and appointments already show up on many of those pages. Gone are the days of my middle childhood when I hated the new year with nothing on those first pages to look forward to. I was too naïve to appreciate those blissful years.

What we discover in later years as we strive for the better life we believe we can make happen is how much discontent follows all this striving to sort it all out and get it right. A blogging writer friend recently shared this wise quote of Wendell Berry: “We live the given life, not planned.”

In the midst of this, it is vital to remember that it is actually good that our short-sighted selves are not the creators of life nor the one who has our days in His plan from before we were born and with Him we can rest in the midst of responsibilities and choices and trust Him to get us to where He desires us to be on this road to eternity.

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The last few years have made this clearer than ever as the world looks to erupt into more and more chaos, storms batter this planet, untamed diseases threaten our lives, and we see no end in these things but rather a growing escalation. We see this big picture but most all of us have our own smaller picture that shows us that. New health issues pop up (not just once), money doesn’t stretch as far, some we love are no longer here, and others are struggling. Asking ‘why’ is common but not productive since it seems throughout history it is simply the way life goes as Wendell Berry suggests.

So where does our rest come in the turbulence of daily life with goals and resolutions already falling short?

“Your rest is not to be found in figuring your life out, but in trusting the One who has it all figured out for your good and his glory.” 

Paul Tripp

And don’t fall prey to trying to see what comes next by trying to sneak a peek at the next page. He hasn’t given grace for that yet. 

“In moments when you wish you knew what you can’t know, there is rest to be found. There is One who knows. He loves you and rules what you don’t understand with your good in mind.” 

Paul Tripp

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