12/31/2016

It's a reflective day.  How did it go?  Did I make a difference?  Am I the same person that I was a year ago?  Have I become more jaded, cynical, or blinded to my own shortcomings?  Am I more generous with grace, gratitude and my resources.  How do I continue the race - reenter the race, change the race - in order to finish well?  

In Os Guinness's book The Call, he speaks to the topic of timing.  He lays out the following four point:

• Calling in a matter of relying on God...we should place our whole reliance on God...'our times are in his hands.'  We humans simply do not have the knowledge or power to stay in tune with our times...God's timing is rarely our timing...our task is to trust.
• Calling is a matter of renouncing inadequate methods for achieving timeliness...our human way is to promote ourselves by any means at any time.  We have to; everything is up to us...[these ways] cannot match providence for timing.
• Calling is a matter of readiness...be on the alert, waiting, watching, ready...obedience honed to the highest level of responsiveness.
• Calling is a matter of resolution...[having] staked the meaning and outcome of their lives on the Royal Majesty by whom they were dubbed.  They are therefore free to turn from their own affairs and to center their lives on the priorities of their questing.  In pursuit of this quest, no pettiness is so petty that it disturbs their meaning.  No task is no immense that it daunts the courage of their calling.

Looking ahead to the new year is then not so much about this next block of time - goals for the year, a month, a week or a day, but rather preparing to rely, renounce, ready, and resolve.  And with that there is a sense of - relief.