New Year Devotional
For many people, the turning of the calendar to a new year is cause for reflection on both what the past year has been and what the coming year has the potential to be. Common areas of reflection include health, rest, relationships, career, and general contentment. I’m not here to comment on the phenomenon of failing—or succeeding with—new year’s resolutions (though there are important parallels to the practice of keeping a fast through lent). Setting goals for a new year is an important discipline so that we’re intentional about prioritizing the right things in the coming year. But how do we know if what we’re prioritizing is “right?”
Before committing our goals and ambitions to paper for the year, we should commit them to memory and to heart. The temptation modern Christians face is to make our plans as we want them to be and then add a dollop of Jesus on top rather than allow Jesus to be the foundational portion of our desires and our plans. The life of faith requires better than that though... Jesus DESERVES better than that.
If you’ve been putting Jesus 10th on your list of priorities the past year, resolve to move him up the list this year. Our resolution needs to be to move Jesus up the list until he’s number one in our lives, and our love for him instructs all our other goals and desires. Until that day comes, we can pray for discernment and faith.
One of the most profound prayers I’ve ever encountered is a prayer by French Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton. I think it moves me because it’s honest. It captures where a lot of Christians are at, which is somewhere on the path to deeper intimacy with God, but unclear exactly where. Let’s you and I start this new year with the desire to please God and see where that takes us.
Prayer by Thomas Merton
O Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going,
I do not see the road ahead of me,
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
And that fact that I think
I am following Your will
Does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe
That the desire to please You
Does in fact please You.
And I hope I have that desire
In all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
Apart from that desire to please You.
And I know that if I do this
You will lead me by the right road,
Though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust You always
Though I may seem to be lost
And in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
For You are ever with me,
And You will never leave me
To make my journey alone.
