Goals Past and Present

Last year I suggested four goals to help us refocus our priorities:

Look up (to God)
Look around (at the need in our world)
Look away (from unwholesome things)
Step back (from the spotlight)

I'd love to say last year was a spectacular success at those things. I can't. But I did make gains in each of those areas.

For the first I turned to James Montgomery Boice's Foundations of the Christian Faith. For the second, I turned to David Batstone's Not for Sale - something I'll be bringing up here shortly.

On the third, well, there were successes and failures. There are many things in our popular culture that are unhealthy, unwholesome, even unseemly, and they're far easier to accept than avoid. But it's a new day and a new year.

On the last ... well, telling would ruin the whole thing, wouldn't it?

This year, I want to focus a little more carefully on looking up:

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."

I may regret not stopping at "resurrection," but, let's face it, suffering with and for Christ has been part of the Way from the beginning. If we're doing it right, we won't be able to avoid that.

So that's my goal this year. I expect to share that journey here, and I hope you all will be along for the ride.