Resolutions

Another new year is dawning and we close the chapter for 2009. As always, we talk of resolutions and the goals we would like to reach in the new year. Instead, I have taken a new perspective in regards to making New Year Resolutions...I won't! I look back over the blog I wrote at the end of 2008 and I quickly notice that most of my "Top 10" predictions didn't come close to being fulfilled...I didn't deploy, we didn't have a fourth child, I didn't get under 200 pounds, and, of all things, I didn't even read through the entire Bible. It shows no merit to set goals that will never be achieved or where an attempt to reach them hasn't even been started. The Scriptures tell us in Matthew 6:24, "So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today." My goals are not based on tomorrow or what will happen next month or what I think I will be doing "this time" next year. It is today and today only. Today is all I have and even its completion is not guaranteed in my life. I choose, rather, to live one day at a time and to use the time of the day wisely and to its fullest. Jame 4:13-14 tells us "Look here, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city. We will spend a year there. We will buy and sell and make money.' You don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while. Then it disappears. Instead, you should say, 'If it pleases the Lord, we will live and do this or that." I will be planning 2010 one day at a time starting with January 1, 2010 and going no further. This, by no means, says that I will ignore what lies ahead in the future. It just means that I plan to stay grounded in the present day (what I can control) so that I can eventually (and successfully) reach December 31, 2010 living focused 24 hours at a time.