Take Time to Reflect as We Tumble Over the Cliff into 2013

A good friend of mine posted this message on Facebook recently:

Don’t want to make resolutions you will break all too soon, but want to be intentional about the direction your life is heading in the next year? Here is a tool to spend a little time evaluating your life holistically at the turn of the New Year.

She included a link to a website called reviveourhearts. com, where you can fill out a “Personal Vitality Plan” (a downloadable PDF) which examines 12 areas of your life, including not only the usual suspects, i.e.:

•  marriage,
• family,
• relationships,
• work, and
• finances.

But also:

• service,
• physical health,
• emotional health,
• moral purity,
• rest and recreation, and
• seeking God. 

“…One way of visualizing your overall development (says the companion text) is to think of  your life as a reservoir comprised of multiple sub-sections. It is possible to be doing well (to be full) in one dimension of your life while neglecting others (to be empty). Identify activities and practices that are helping “fill” you in each area or that are “draining” you in areas…

We all know that our calendar’s sometimes ominous turning from one year to the next is an artificial boundary. We don’t need to wait for January 1st to look at our lives in this way. Each of us is quite capable of making changes in any area of life at any time. 

And so is our government, for that matter…but the two parties seem to be playing a prolonged game of “chicken” right now, as if our collective woes were nothing more than a teenage joyride on a country road. Meanwhile, the country is coming to the end of the “road”, and I don’t think there’s much joy happening any time soon.

Even if Congress isn’t doing any soul searching, that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t. Frankly, national disarray makes having one’s personal house in order MORE important rather than less. We each need, now more than ever, to be sober, responsible, prepared for anything...and right with God.

(How’s that for an end-of-the-year message? Might put a damper on your partying tomorrow night, I know.)

So if you’re looking for a handy tool for evaluating strengths and weaknesses in your personal or professional life right now, why not use the one I mentioned above? There are also others readily available with a simple internet search, but the Person Vitality Plan is the only one I saw which is free.

After all–just because “New Year’s Resolutions” are a cliché doesn’t mean they’re not a good idea. And if you’re having trouble evaluating yourself, you can always ask for Help.

Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
 See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139:23-24, NIV