#Goals

A new year...a new start...it's "just" a turn of the page of the calendar but somehow everything feels new.

No one seems quite sure of the exact origins of making New Year's resolutions, but there are historical examples in both the Babylonian and Roman cultures. The Babylonians saw the beginning of a new year as a time to return borrowed objects and paying off debts (hmmm...). The Romans made promises to the god Janus (for which the month of January is named), the god of beginnings, time and doorways. Somewhere along the way, such traditions and practices got combined and shaped into what we know as resolutions...promises we make but have no intention of keeping!

This morning, in my inbox, I got the following list of historical resolutions from Mikey's Funnies. See if they don't reflect your experience:

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
2015: I will get my weight down below 180 pounds.
2016: I will follow my new diet religiously until I get below 200 pounds.
2017: I will develop a realistic attitude about my weight.
2018: I will work out 3 days a week.
2019: I will try to drive past a gym at least once a week.

Now, that last one is one I can keep!

Seriously, though, making resolutions is largely an exercise in futility at best and at worst an excuse to beat ourselves up for not keeping said resolutions. But we need goals. We need things toward which we are striving. Without goals, we will be the same person next year that we are today.

As a pastor, I often sit down with people preparing to remember their loved one, and especially if it's a family I don't know or didn't know well, I will ask them to share some of the outstanding characteristics of their loved one. What did they enjoy? What did they accomplish? How would they like to be remembered? Do you know what the most frequently shared quality is in that situation? In 26 years of ministry, what I have heard most often is...

"They were nice."

I will come home after such an encounter and tell my family, "I want to be remembered as more than nice." I mean, I do hope people think I'm nice—but not JUST that. I want there to be more to say about me than, "He was nice."

So I set goals. I set my sights on things I want to achieve. And I evaluate how well I've done. My big goal? To be more like Christ. Every year, as I look back, I want to know that I am more like him this year than I was last year. Has what I've done in the past year moved me closer to him or further away? Because staying the same, or just being "nice," isn't enough.

So what are your goals for 2019? We're three days into the year. What do you want to be different next year? Don't make this year just a "nice" year. Make it a year for achieving goals and be more than you are right now.