A new year is usually a time we are nudged to create new goals for the upcoming days, weeks, and months ahead. Many of you have already done that or are considering it. The goals may be related to diet, exercise, sleep, finances, time management, career options, and more. What we may not consider is what the goals reveal about us.

Sometimes the goal may be to continue growth in an area we are already working on. Sometimes it is to start on a new area we have targeted. We may even choose a goal based on a recommendation of a friend or someone we love. Perhaps we might consider a spiritual goal if we can get beyond the usual hype of “New Year’s Resolutions” that lean more to the temporal daily lives we are living.

Goals tend to suggest what is important to us or at least what we believe should be important to us. Succeeding at goals we set makes us feel good, but the opposite is also true.

Do we ever consider “big picture” goals that really have the potential to shape our character and hence our choices in every area of our lives?

What do I mean by “big picture” goals? One example would be to be more committed in the really central roles I am called to play as a spouse, child, friend, employee, or even as a child of God. Another would be to become more mature no matter what our age may be or to be more authentic in our relationships. If we are honest with ourselves, we may want those and yet they are not often ones that sit at the top of any list of written goals.

These are much tougher because of what they require of us in order to develop these goals.

“For that to happen there must be honesty and truth. The self must be toppled from its pedestal. There must be pure hearts and clear intelligence, confession of sin and commitment in faith.”

Eugene Peterson in Run with the Horses

And there’s the rub. We look for the shortest distance, the easiest path, and quickest answer despite the scripture that reminds us not to make those choices.

“Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.”

Matthew 7:13-14 (MSG)

The Sermon on the Mount from which these verses are taken is full of rich wisdom, but that means we need to take the longer route, the narrower path, the harder journey with more difficult choices. We don’t arrive at peace within ourselves or any of our desired goals any other way and when we look at athletes, musicians, scholars, and others who appear to have reached the summits in their chosen area, it can be far too easy to be tempted to the fallacy that it “just happened” for them and not see the hours and hours of hard work and discipline that is required to attain the achievements we see being lauded and applauded.

It’s true for us in the “big picture” goals as well.

“There is evil to combat, apathy to defeat, dullness to challenge, ambition to confront.”

Eugene Peterson in Run with the Horses

I love this quote from Bill Hybels as well:

“Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with.”

Bill Hybels in Who You Are When No One’s Looking

That’s the stuff of character and integrity and it means being sure the template of our lives is the only one that will get us there – the Word of God, not only read or memorized, but lived out whether we are in church, the grocery store, at a ball game, at home by ourselves, or anywhere at all.

In conjunction with reading Eugene Peterson’s book, Run with the Horses, I read through the Old Testament book of Jeremiah again. One of the things that stands out about him is his character and integrity. He wasn’t considered a leader nor one of any great significance, so he wasn’t imprisoned, hauled off in chains or executed and yet those bedrock “big picture” goals were central to who he was that causes us to read his words even today.

“We must learn to live by the truth, not by our feelings, not by the world’s opinion, not by what the latest statistical survey tells us is the accepted morality, not by what advertisers tell us is the most gratifying lifestyle. We are trained in the biblical faith to take lightly what the experts say, the scholars say, the pollsters say, the politicians say, the pastors say. We are trained to listen to the Word of God, to test everything against what God reveals to us in Christ, to discover all meaning and worth by examining life in relation to God’s will.”

Eugene Peterson in Run with the Horses

That makes the path we are to choose very clear. We will need to do life each day with God, not as a footnote to our preferences, but a holy GPS to get us to the destination.

In our desire to walk out our Christian life as a disciple of the Lord, one of the things we can easily stumble on is how we deal with the biblical paradoxes that we read. One of these came up in the book I reviewed by Barry C. Black (Nothing to Fear: Principles & Prayers to Help You Thrive in a Threatening World). It is one we are all familiar with in Matthew 10:16:

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

Matthew 10:16 ESV

It is one of the admonitions Jesus gives as He sends out his disciples as they are to prepare for persecution and the trouble ahead as they seek to follow Him and share his gospel message.

Barry Black defines the two parts of the paradox as follows:

“The innocence of the dove refers to gentleness and purity; the wisdom of the serpent has to do with being aware of the presence of evil.”

Barry Black in Nothing to Fear:Principles & Prayers to Help You Thrive in a Threatening World

I think that sounds clear enough, don’t you? It is in the details of how we operationalize it that I need to look more closely at the passage.

The Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible gives me some insight:

“Alone, the wisdom of the serpent is mere cunning, and the harmlessness of the dove little better than weakness: but in combination, the wisdom of the serpent would save them from unnecessary exposure to danger; the harmlessness of the dove, from sinful expedients to escape it. ^“

The descriptions used point to the life Jesus was living out before them as they walked with Him in his earthly ministry. He was ever wise not rushing into danger or brashly confronting the evil of the day whether it was in the government of Rome or the Pharisees of the day.

That was one of the things that seemed to cause some who heard Him to question whether or not He was truly sent to set things in godly order and establish his Kingdom on earth. There was plenty of injustice and religious hypocrisy going on, but He didn’t charge in to correct it all. Justice will not be fully balanced with righteousness until He returns again to establish his Kingdom.

I think it can be easy for me (and perhaps you) to be tempted to jump in with a strong response to something we see as clearly ungodly without waiting to determine if we know the whole story or if we are called by the Lord to reconcile what we see with what we perceive to be His truth.

Sometimes we are blind to our own perspectives and self-interest that draws us into an issue or situation as a result of the shrewdness of the serpent (Satan). If we read the gospels carefully, it is clear Jesus was not unwilling to deal forthrightly with many issues of the day, but He did not address them all. He chose his battles for when it would most glorify his Father and reach the hearts of those listening.

Sometimes with the social media we all have available, it can be easy for us to respond to nearly everything we read or see on one or the other side of the issue. If we are honest, I think we can see that is a ploy to shift our focus and tempt us to carnality on our walk and divide us one with another.

We also need to be careful when we point out others who fall prey to it and miss how often we succumb to the very same temptation. Paul warns us of that in Romans 10:2 ESV: “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.”

It can be so easy when I (or we) are stirred up about someone or some thing to feel we are called on to respond and when we do, we neglect wisdom in both our character and our actions. Black’s advice in his book is simple and straightforward: “Strive to be unmixed with evil.” What a powerful truth and challenge for each one of us.

I know I often need to take a deep breath to allow not only oxygen to cleanse my physical being but also allow the breath of the Holy Spirit to adjust my humanity to line up with His character and how He would have me respond. In that moment, I am often reminded that He has already empowered me to deal with the paradox of the serpent and the dove if I allow Him to guide me. That is the key to the temptations that can easily come.

Sometimes He may well be calling me to be silent. Wisdom knows when to speak and when not to speak. Most of us have heard the wise adage of Abraham Lincoln:

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

January can be a time when we reassess many areas of our lives whether it is finances, health, or relationships. Something about turning the calendar to a new year feels a bit like turning to a clean page devoid of smudges, scrawls, lists completed, and lists undone.

It is often a reflective time.

It feels like we get to start over.

I have been involved with that as well. It is one of the things I have come to enjoy about January. Somehow the month seems quieter and lends itself to that if you live in the Midwest and days turn frosty, the wind howls, and a fireplace beckons.

Relationships are my greatest passion.

Yes, they can be messy, disappointing, challenging, and hurtful many times, but they also teach me so much about others, the Lord, and myself. They do so in a myriad of ways that nothing else can.

There are two cornerstones that influence the course of the development of all of our relationships.

The first relational cornerstone is knowledge.

I can’t very well have a relationship unless I know the person. A relationship implies a connection. The tricky part for most of us is how we go about the process of getting to know a person.

Early in our lives we use some fairly superficial observations as our source of knowledge. It’s not bad, but it is incomplete. Hearing what someone says and listening to how they express themselves and what they talk about often starts the process.

We add to that knowledge what we see them doing or being involved with and this helps us begin to discern a bit more about their interests, passions, and values.

On the basis of these two initial pieces of knowledge, we often choose whether or not to pursue a relationship. If we go forward, we discover there is much more to learn than we initially realized.

When I met my husband more than sixty-three years ago, I started to learn about these basic things. They let me know that I wanted to get to know him better, but it would take many years and a great deal of time to plumb the depths of his heart, the complexities of his thoughts, the strength of his spirit, and the nuances of his personality. Even now, I discover some new thing here or there that adds to the texture of the fabric of the relationship we have built.

I also have learned much about his character by observing how his words and behaviors tend to match. That spells integrity. All of this together has deepened my love, our love.

Do I, do we, invest that energy in our relationship with the Lord? Do we invest it with others?

The second relational cornerstone is habit.

Habit? That sounds boring and unexciting for sure. Habit suggests practice, diligent practice many times. That suggests work, discipline, a never ending process.

The truth is that if I believe I know all there is to know about someone, I will stop learning about him or her, stop pursuing him or her. The relationship will grow stale and may even fade away through neglect.

That belief will also reveal my self-centered arrogance. Ouch!

Only the Lord knows any one of us completely. There are no gaps in His knowledge and understanding because He is God!

We human types always operate with incomplete knowledge about the Lord, others, and ourselves.

Great relationships require lifelong learning.

To do that, I also need to develop the habits that cause my knowledge to increase. I need to continue to observe, listen very carefully, and spend intentional time with a person.

None of us are static. We are ever evolving and changing, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in bad. That’s why we will miss the rich discoveries of a relationship if we do not grow in the practice of investing the energy to keep learning.

That is no less true about my relationship with the Lord. Yes, it means developing my relational habits with Him.

My knowledge of Him will always be limited because I am finite, but it will be very restricted if I don’t continue to learn to know Him better.

I can do that certainly by time in His Word, reading and studying it, but there is more needed. That can stay stuck in the cerebral if I get hung up on that alone. Solitude with Him where I am conversing with Him, listening to His whispers, learning more of His heart for me adds richness and texture to anything I read or study. I also observe how I see Him working in the world around me, in the lives of those I know well, and in the lives of some I have never met.

For me this means recommitting to practice daily the habit of learning about the relationships I value most. After all, they are God’s gifts to me. How am I stewarding them?

Today we not only turn the page to a new day and new month, but also a new year. If you are reading this, you have been given the gift of life and time once more.

What will you do with this gift?

Each of us will choose how we spend it and sometimes forget that how much we are given is unknown to us.

It can be easy for us to complain about time. Some say they have too much time on their hands while others say they never have enough time to do all they want to do. I get that! I have experienced both at one time or another, but more of the latter.

I have reached the conclusion that even though there are “must do” things in every day whether it is work, household chores, or other assignments I have agreed to, I am still the one who is to steward the time. I make many choices about what my days and weeks look like. Many of the “have to do” things reflect my priorities, my values, my preferences, and my passions.

They also reflect consequences of other choices I have made. What kind? What I chose to do with education and how that impacts the choice of my work and even location. Yes, things can happen outside of my choices. There are forces outside of my control that act on me. I can become ill through no fault of my own, but I can also become ill because I did not steward my physical health by good choices about sleep, food, and exercise.

Each day we receive a blank page. What am I writing on it? What will you write on yours?

What we write each day weaves many threads together that becomes ‘our’ story. That is likely most evident in a new year when we set goals for the year ahead, resolutions for what we want to do differently in order to be different.

What will you write?

The key to that answer is whether we recognize we are each a part of a much larger story, God’s story. It can be easy to forget that. We can get caught up with the notion that the story is about us rather than remember He has created each of us to be a part of a much larger story than we could ever create and it is His story.

Even so, He gives us a lot of leverage in how our part of it will play out no matter what our role may be.

A long time ago I heard a graduation speaker share this:

“If you love life, do not waste time because time is what life is made of and what you are is God’s gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift to God.”

The memory of that statement has remained etched in my mind. When I was younger, I thought I needed to fill up my days to not waste time. Now I recognize there are many ways to fill up a day and the speaker didn’t mean to cram each day’s schedule to the brim. I believe he meant that each day should count whether I was working, appreciating the beauty around me and being in touch with the One who created it, or handling the duties that might come to me as a wife and mother.

I don’t take time for granted.

So, today as we turn the page on another day, month, and year, what will you choose?

Will you gain new insights in the role the Lord has invited you to play in His story?

Will you value your role whether it seems large or small?

Just remember. Each day you are given the opportunity to add a few lines to His story. He loved you that much and invited you to create with Him and to therefore bring honor and glory to Him about all others.

What will you write?