Let the New Year Begin

My Vocation is Love. –Mother Teresa

Happy 2012!!

It’s a fresh start to a new year and resolutions have been made. I heard that 78% of people at the end of the year have failed to complete their resolutions they made at the beginning. Part of the reason we fail is because we think we’re going to complete our goal all at once. For most of us, that would involve a complete 180-degree turn towards the other direction, with no room for error.  Oftentimes we quit when we don’t achieve instant success.  This doesn’t mean our goals are too big, it just means we need to take smaller steps to reach them.

My resolution this year is to change the world. I don’t plan on solving world hunger or bringing about world peace, but I firmly believe I can change my little corner of the world by being a kinder, gentler version of myself beginning right here in my home. Let’s face it, sometimes the hardest people to love are the ones we live with! Making an effort to love them the way Jesus taught us to love is the perfect training ground for loving and serving my neighborhood and community. 

 

In a church service I was in this morning, our Pastor was talking about different people who have made a big change in this world. People like Mother Theresa, The Wright brothers, Sir Isaac Newton, and Martin Luther King Jr. When you look at what these people accomplished, you see that their success was not instantaneous and it was not without effort. They took small steps to reach their goals, but they were always moving in the direction of those goals.

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. –Reggie Leach

Over the past couple of years I’ve prayed for God to change me. It finally dawned on me that God wasn’t instantly going to change me into the perfect version of myself, but instead if I am focused on delighting in His will and walking in His ways He will give me the opportunity to change. As Pastor Levi said today in his sermon “Change doesn’t happen instantaneously, but rather happens one stride at a time.” So 2012 is the year I take one stride at a time to become the kind and loving adult I want to be.

Luke 10:27    “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself.”