Skip to main content

More New Year's Thoughts

 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

          Someone on social media asked how we can have an enjoyable new year with the pandemic. Of course, my first thought was, “That depends on what you consider enjoyable.” That led me to the question of what I considered enjoyable about 2020. The answers I ended up giving him were that I enjoyed accomplishing things, helping (myself and others – but truth told, I tend to enjoy helping others more,) and learning. I suggested to him that whatever the two or three broad areas were for him, that he should pursue them.

          Science tells us that endorphins make us feel good. They are responsible for the “high” you feel after working out, and for the “high” you feel when you’ve helped someone who needed it. They are the body’s response to stress. So if we want an enjoyable year, we need to stress ourselves. We need to exercise every part of us. We need to help (do good for) ourselves and others.

          What science tells me, then, is that to have an enjoyable year, I need to accomplish things, help myself and others, and learn. Yesterday’s conclusions about what I need to do are to bow the knee, get on my feet, and hit the ground running. Today’s passage ties in with all of these. What bowing the knee looks like – in part – is acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with my God.

          Your three broad areas may be different from mine, but exerting, stressing, or challenging yourself in them will be what makes 2021 a good year. You may have another way of describing what you sense about next year, but whatever they are, keep them before you as you head into the year. At the end of 2021, I’d like to be able to say that I am both exhausted and energized, or endorphined because I pulled together these ideas.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more