Happy New Year! - 4 January 2010

Christmas is sandwiched between two periods of reflection, Advent and New Year. Sadly, Advent reflection is squeezed by the busy lead up to Christmas, so maybe New Year provides a more natural time for many of us to take a step back.  Although New Year is more of a secular time for change, I’m sure God can use it.  It just seems a natural time to consider things we want to change and what is driving us, and as Christians looking to God in those things.

When we consider what drives us we think about our ‘heart’, what is at the core of us, what we really want.  Jesus talks a lot about the heart: it is the part of us that God looks at.  When we honestly examine our hearts, what we find there isn’t all holy, we are a work in progress.  But often this reality is obscured by the busy or sometimes humdrum nature of our lives, and we don’t always know why we are doing the things we are doing.  I think taking time out to examine our hearts is vital to get a true perspective on our lives, and what God might want to change in us.

Jesus gives us a powerful lesson about our hearts:

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Luke12:34 [NIV]

Two thoughts:

We don’t have to be driven by a wayward heart.  A key to changing it is where we choose to invest our time, money and energy.  As we sense God’s call to change our hearts, and seek his help in that, we can enable that change by choosing what we invest in.

Secondly, maybe you have forgotten how to dream, either because of frenetic or mundane activity.  Maybe New Year is a time to wait on God for a new calling, or remember something he put on your heart a long time ago, and establish it by putting your treasure there.