You Say You Want a Resolution

(apologies to the “Fab Four”)

Here it is, January 3, and I still haven’t broken any resolutions. That’s so much easier to accomplish when you consider that I haven’t made any resolutions. Well… that’s not true. Not completely anyway.

If all goes according to plan, we’ll be heading overseas in about eight months. There’s a lot of planning involved in that, a lot of preparation. We have to think about learning the language. We have to study the culture. We have to consider what is involved in planting churches and training up leaders in an unfamiliar land. And we must think about what else we’ll be doing there and in what other ways we’ll be serving in the Name of Christ. We’ve got a lot to take in.

We also have a lot to get rid of.

That’s our resolution this year; to decide what to get rid of. 

For everything we own, we have to decide if it is something we want to pay to ship overseas, whether it is something we want to pay to store, or whether it is something that we simply need to get rid of. A lot of our stuff is falling somewhere into that last category. Some of it we’re selling. Some of it we’re “regifting”. And some of it we’re just doing away with. For most of it, we’re better off just getting rid of it and getting new stuff. As we need it.

Isn’t that kind of the point of resolutions anyway? 

We come to the New Year with all kinds of stuff; preconceptions about ministry, preconceptions about people, preconceptions about who we are and what our place in the Kingdom is. And we’re left with pretty much the same three choices. Are our preconceptions worth taking along with us on our journey? Are they something perhaps incomplete or incorrect that we just can’t bear to part with? Or are they something that we just need to dispose of? Yeah, for the most part, it’s best to just start over from scratch. 

For the past few months, God has been leading us through the process of changing our perceptions; of challenging what we thought was reality. Of causing us to rethink what it means to have faith and depend fully on God. Of what our place in the Kingdom is. We’ve been challenged, we’ve been afraid, and we’ve been stretched. But mostly we’re been awestruck. We’ve been awestruck at the marvelous complexity of God’s purpose, and how God goes about the myriad details of accomplishing that purpose. And we’re honored to be a part of it all. 

We resolve to stay right here, letting God pare down what we take, what we keep, and what we lose.