Happy New Year.  Welcome to my first blog entry of 2010… wow that sounds surreal… the 2010 part not the first blog entry part.

Since the end of 2009, we have been in the midst of Year-End inventory… this is a time of the year that I absolutely despise.  It’s very time-consuming; fairly mundane; pretty dusty… and just not a lot of fun.  This is a time of the year where we count the number of units remaining in inventory of every SKU.  Warehouse shelves get reorganized so that items can be found more easily… dust is removed from boxes… floors are swept cleaner than any other time of the year… decisions are made about discontinuing items that just haven’t moved (or just taking up space)… decisions are made about which vendors and artists to continue doing business with and which ones just aren’t working out… etc. 

As I was in the storeroom last week, I began to think about how this process may be relevant to our walk with Christ.  I wondered if there was a need to assess the things in my life that were just taking up space and distracting me from my mission on this earth… perhaps bad habits that take up space and don’t allow for Godly habits.  I also thought about practices or disciplines that may fall away throughout the year that need to be dusted off and repositioned in a more prominent place so that I can more easily navigate toward them and use them… and rely upon them… things like journaling and reading the scripture daily. 

Then I began to consider how this Spiritual Life Inventory is connected to New Year’s Resolutions… I was fairly convicted that if I was to make a resolution… it would be that I continue to decrease and HE continues to increase in my life in 2010.  I resolved to allow HIM to work freely in my life… even to joyously endure the testing that He allows (God designs tests to surface what is good in a person and to bring glory to HIM).  I hold on to James 1:2-4 ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish it s work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.’  I vowed to be obeDIEnt to HIM and continue the process of dying to myself and to my plans.

All of this thinking was brought full-circle at worship yesterday.  The sermon was entitled, ‘Make History or Just Be It’.  The scripture was from the book of Esther and the story line was around the communication between Esther and her cousin Mordecai in regards to him asking her to go to the King to plead for the lives of those who love and follow God.  The whole story is fabulous and found in the early chapters of Esther… but the specific scripture that really resonated with me was in verse 14, where Mordecai writes to her saying  ‘… who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such as a time as this?’  I love that… it reminds me that we are deliberately placed and perfectly situated in the ‘here and now’ for a purpose.  That scripture enabled me to see past my circumstances… and directly to the heart of the matter; which is that I must face 2010 with a resolute attitude that God is in control of my life.  The circumstances around me may not always make sense, but that He plans no harm to me (Rom 8:28).  I am His masterpiece (Eph 2:10), and I was created to do good works that He planned long ago.  I am not ‘here and now’ by accident.

Are there any resolutions you need to make?