New Years Eve

Folks everywhere are talking about their resolutions for the New Year, and I must admit that such thoughts for myself are running round in circles in my brain this week. I tend to look at the New Year as a time for new beginnings, time to take stock in how I lived my life in the past year and make corrections in the places where I seemed to get off course, be it spiritually, physically, nutrition wise or in accomplishing things I had set out to. I seem to take a more serious inventory of my spiritual direction in the fall.... Yom Kippur is my day of reflection, however January 1, is a time for new direction in many ways.
So many folks over indulge during the Christmas season. Eat too much, spend too much, and end up with lots of remorse for letting loose of the reins. It seems a bit strange as I write this, that Christmas, the very day we celebrate the extremely humble birth of a very humble Savior that we take that as a time to over indulge. The connection to the two seems so far off the mark.
I do wonder so often how it is that we who call ourselves Christians have managed to put humble living so low on the scale of how to live. We even find ways to justify our need for "high end" living. What ever happened to living Christ like ? Hard to find that sort of mentality in a church that feels the need to cater to our senses and seeking to entertain us as if we were at the theater.
It is hard to hear that small still voice when the music is blaring and the lights are flashing.
This new year, I am going to seek first to love one another more, to live life with a purpose far beyond gaining material wealth. To continue on this path of simple living, not because its cool or the thing to do, but re-commit to the reasons we chose this path in the first place. To live humbly, seeking first the Kingdom of God and letting God give us what He sees we need or should have.
I know the story of a young man, who thought wealth was the thing to make him important, yet in the process, lost his soul. Oh he said the right things in church etc but his family knew the truth of his walk. His children grew and had anger in their hearts for the hypocrisy of it all. They saw his need to impress as a huge joke. His children resented him, grew cold and just as you might expect they married poorly in rebellion to their father. The father and the mother grew old and lonely. As the years had passed, the father realized he had sown amid the weeds and the harvest was poor. Seeking out material gain had little reward in the end. His final years were spent in loneliness surrounded by things that had little importance in the end.
Soon the seed catalogs will be arriving in the mail. Too early to plant, but time to plan.
Just as it is for us now to prepare for sowing the seeds of life. We need to plan our gardens well.