Beat your annual December holiday existential crisis

It's not just me that has a ‘mid-life crisis’ every year in the December holidays. Probably you do too.

It’s a time for reflection on the year that’s past and dreaming about what could be in the year to come. When I finally have some time to think about my life.

Too much time.

I found myself (once again) reflecting on my life, praying about my calling (again), asking God what he wants me to do next year. ‘What adventure do you have in store for me next year God?’

I felt him speak to me in that still, small voice, so gentle,

“My people are like sheep without a shepherd. If you love me, if you want to serve me, feed my sheep.”

Don’t you find God to be just like that? He’s such an anchor for the soul. He tells us not what we are wanting to hear necessarily but what our souls so desperately need to hear.

My great treasure and joy in following Christ is that when he is with me he gives such value and meaning to the trivial, seemingly mundane things. Like loving people.

The spectacular thing about the life of Christ was that the vast majority of it was so… so unspectacular. So ordinary.

His life provokes me to cherish the unspectacular but no less precious things in my life.

Like a wife and child that love me.

Like friends who care about me.

Like the daily opportunities that I have to show love and compassion and Jesus to the people that circulate through my life. The lady serving me at the till. The neighbour I bump into in the stair-well. The friend in church needing a lift to the airport. Someone who’s life is in crisis that needs me to share the good news of Jesus because they are finally ready to hear it.

As I look forward to this new year my hearts cry is the same as Moses, ‘Lord if you don’t go with me, I’m not going to go’.

It doesn’t matter what I do in this New Year, if I’m not doing it in fellowship with Jesus, its going to be lame. It’s going to be done in my strength, in my flesh, for myself. It’ll just be dry straw that will burn in the last day.

And so as we enter this new year, may our hearts cry be ‘Lord may we be with you. May we join you in whatever you are doing. Because there is nothing that satisfies as much as you!’