If we were honest, would relationships be the first thing we’d think of when it comes to New Year’s resolutions?
God first? Family and friends? Sure hope so.
The Lord brought home a friend recently. He seemed too young.
A recent email told of someone with Stage 4 cancer.
When someone is ill or dying, they sure move up on our list. But may God help us to resolve that it won’t take finality to corner us into intentionally loving people as was His design.
God engineered us for relationships. It sounds so simple. Yet, anyone can miss it. One of the great designers, Howard Hughes, ironically ended up designing a life of seclusion.
Because life is relatively complicated, the people in our lives can get pushed to the back burner in favor of burning calories and mortgages.
Not even God would suggest that we ignore our responsibilities. But Marley shrieks at Scrooge when the latter overplays his commitment to the “responsibility” of business:
Scrooge: “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.”
Marley: “Business! Mankind was my business.”
If we were made for relationships for life, does it not make sense we were made for relationships for this upcoming year?
New Year’s resolutions must be etched in the tablets of God’s will. When we talk of Moses and tablets, we remember that God’s very fingers wrote about nothing less than relationships.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: We weave in and out of relationships and responsibilities. But may the very reason for our responsibilities never be cloaked in anything less than to supply for those resolutely given to us by God.
Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever…Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
1 Timothy 5:8 NIV, James 1:27