JUST BECAUSE THE CALENDAR CHANGES

My wife, Roxann, does a whiteboard calendar for each month of our lives and hangs it in our kitchen. (Just what I need…a constant reminder of our thin-margined life.) Anyway, I’m always blown away at how quickly she has to pull it down and record the next month. It sometimes feels like my days are moving so quickly that I could cool a room with the breeze from the turning pages of the calendar. In the words of Bob Dylan, “the times they are a-changin.”

But, just because the calendar keeps changing…doesn’t mean we are. Sadly, many of us live our lives like a worker who doesn’t particularly like their job…we just pass the time. In harsher words, we waste the time, and, in so doing, our lives. Could anything be more tragic?

I like to use the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day to assess what I did with the gift of time I was entrusted with in the past year. Did I just thoughtlessly pass it, waste it, and squander it OR did I intentionally and positively use it, invest it, and live it? To be honest, this process usually makes me more melancholy than sanguine. But, it’s proven very valuable over the years.

This year, as with most, I’ve given myself mixed reviews. But, on balance, as I look back on this year in future years, I believe it will have been a course-changing, life-changing, ministry changing year. Interestingly enough, it won’t be as the result of all of the busyness that my precious wife recorded on her whiteboard calendar. In fact, I believe it will ultimately be in spite of the busyness. I believe that the real difference will result from a couple of significant, course-correcting decisions that I made.

Though the decisions are important to me, at least for the purpose of this blog, they’re irrelevant to you. But, what is relevant to you is that I made them. My point…the calendar will keep changing but you never will…UNLESS you make life-changing…course-changing decisions. Did you this past year?’

If not, (or even if you did), I want to encourage you to do what it takes to make them this next year. All of my positive decisions this past year resulted from intentionally opening myself up to new ideas, thoughts, principles, etc. For me, this happened mostly through reading. To summarize an old adage…there are only two primary things that will lead to change in our lives…the people we meet and the things we read.

Whatever you do this next year…make sure you invest some time in meeting new people and reading some good stuff.

I’d love your thoughts.