Happy New Year!

I’m just wondering...is there anyone reading this blog that is even a little disappointed that there are only a couple of days left in 2011? If you are one such person, I would love to hear from you to find out why. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think 2011 will be recorded in my memory as the Worst Year Ever. Rather, I am optimistically looking forward to 2012. Why, you ask? Because it is a NEW year.

We love and serve a God that is in the business of making all things new and with the arrival of 2012 He will be giving us a whole new block of time. Depending on your preferred measurement that’s either 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, or 31,536,000 seconds.

For me, 2012 is going to bring some rather dramatic changes. First, January 15th will mark the 5 year anniversary of the first Sunday I served Spring of Life as the Worship Music Leader. It is somewhat difficult to believe that I am entering my sixth year in ministry with and for some of the greatest people I have ever known.

February will bring our 10 year wedding anniversary...and what a decade it has been! I’m sure I don’t need to inform anyone of this, but Lenora is clearly the better half. To borrow a song lyric, of all the gifts God’s given there is none as precious to me as the treasure of my wife. (You didn’t know that underneath my gruff exterior lies a hopeless romantic, did you?)

Next will be the arrival of our third child in late April/early May. For those of you that may not have heard, she’s a girl! The minute she is born will be a life-changing moment, a moment that will be forever recorded in my memory.

Finally, 2012 will also represent the beginning of my final year of study at Asbury Theological Seminary. My seminary journey began in June 2009 and will conclude (hopefully) with graduation in May 2013. This means that I will also be seeking approval from the District Committee of Ordained Ministry (DCOM) to appear before the Board of Ordained Ministry (BOM), the next step on my path to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. My time in seminary and candidacy has been by far the most transformative experience of my life. I am deeply grateful to all of you for the love, prayers, and support you have given me and my family.

So, these are just a few of the things I am looking forward to this year. What I am most looking forward to, however, is the common thread shared by these things. These are all God-given opportunities, invitations if you will, to become more fully who God created me to be. They are invitations to a deeper spiritual life. That may seem like a bit of an overstatement but it’s not. You see, these are all opportunities to continue learning how to be in the world without being of the world. In the words of Henri Nouwen, “the spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.” This means that my life in the world, as a minister of the gospel, as a husband, as a father, as a student, can and should point to Jesus. The roles I play may be separate in certain ways but they all share a common objective. In each, I need to set my heart on the kingdom, always striving to know God and make Him known.

This is what I’ve been contemplating as 2012 quickly approaches. However, “the spiritual life can be lived in as many ways as there are people.” In 2012, what will be your God-given opportunities to enter into a deeper spiritual life, to become more fully who God created you to be? Something worth thinking about...