“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
– Isaiah 43:18-19
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.” — Joseph Campbell
Do you get excited as you turn the calendar page to a new month? What about when you take down the old calendar and replace it entirely with a new one? If you are like me, you get a little boost of spirit as you look at the empty dates; realizing that you have the opportunity to begin with a bank slate. It is a opportunity to decide what will be written down, what commitments will be made, what events will fill your days.
Of course, part of that opportunity is the chance to not write some things down. Part of the excitement of a new page, a new month, or a new year is deciding what we leave behind in the old page/month/year. We have an opportunity to take stock of how we used our time and energies in the past and to sort what we will take on that’s new, what we will carry forward with us from the past, and what we will leave behind that is no longer useful or productive.
When we are consciously planning and managing our time and energies, we can think of it as a spiritual practice. God has grated the same number of hours in a day to each of us; what we are able to fill them with depends in many cases on how disciplined and intentional we are as we set priorities for ourselves that make sure that we have given ourselves the time necessary to accomplish those things that we have said are important to us. Making the changes to our schedules that help us eliminate wasteful hours and filling the with productive ones is part of being a good steward of the precious gift of the that God has bestowed on us.
For most of us, there will be certain automatic additions to our blank calendar pages; events and meetings that will automatically carry over from the last year to the next. Meetings that have always been scheduled for the first Tuesday of the month will likely carry forward into the new year unchanged. Part of deciding what we carry forward and what we leave behind should always include a good hard look at how much of our time is spoken for in this rather habitual way. For some of us, it may be time for a season of fewer full time-slots and more empty and available days to allow for that something new that God promises us all to take place.
Whether you are at a place where the challenge you face is too few full days or too many, my hope for each of us is that we would take very seriously the opportunities of the New Year. May we each be disciplined enough to allow enough space for the growth of new things, in addition to the maintenance of old commitments and obligations.
365 days stretch before us in the year 2023; let’s make a commitment to not waste a moment of any of them!
Peace,
Pastor Layne