Micah 6:8
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Like all other year beginning celebrations, the welcoming of 2011 has been done with much enthusiasm from everyone I know. Facebook is literally flooded with all the bold claims that 2011 will be a great year and individuals will be a year of greater happenings.
The fact of the matter should be that every year's experience should superceed the year before. However, the reality is our emotions only get stoked when we head towards the end of the year or during the early part when a new dawn awakens. Often, the mid-way journey gets muted once we are knee deep in the midst of the year dealing with problems and issues. Then, whatever we proclaimed in the start of the year is but a fleeting memory.
To ensure a constant journey with appropriate moments to revive the dreams and aspirations set in the start of 2011, it is good to create milestones or evaluation review moments for measuring our progress. It can be a simple quarterly self or accountability group evaluation or planning for a half-yearly retreat to review all we've documented to achieve in this early phase of the year. Failing to measure what we have proclaimed this week, will just result in all talk and no action once we are swamped in life's issues.
During the normadic moments where the people of Israel had no nation to live in. they set up altars of worship at significant points of their lives and everytime one walks past one, it serves as a a reminder of God's intervention in their pass as well as His ability to bring them through if they go through a similar situation. So it's also equally important to see what significant events/occasions exists this year for us to revisit or sign up for to have a moment of encounter with God and rekindle what good we have experienced of God in the past.
You and I have different expectations of 2011. Don't just get all excited to just proclaim the joy for this first week of 2011. We still have 51 more weeks to live through with lots to do and multiple challenges that, I'm sure, will come our way.
Our Christian journey is not about starting well. It's really about how we remain constant in the marathon of life and most importantly, to end it well. Meanwhile, as the dusts of this new year celebrations begin, may you and I learn to walk humbly before God rather than run ahead in wild abandon to carpe diem.
M.
