Good advice

"Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you . . . remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business . . . even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought . . . unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy . . . What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort . . . than being able from time to time to stop that chatter . . . "
— Frederick Buechner (Telling Secrets)

This is good advice and the closest I will come to making any kind of a New Year's resolution. I know better. No sooner do I put pressure on myself to do what I should already be doing that I fail miserably within a few weeks. The best thing I can come up with for 2010 is to keep doing the same things I did in 2009 but lean on God even more and myself even less. The best way to keep myself honest is to keep the Word close at hand. It shows my utter failure to do anything at all of eternal value in my own power. And it also shows that the giants of the faith had the same stuggles that I have. That makes me feel a bit better.

So today, and hopefully tomorrow I will get up and start all over again with a spirit of thanksgiving regardless of what is going on in my life, knowing that each day, each breath, is a precious gift from You, God. Thank you for the compass of Your Word and ones you have placed in my life to straighten me out when I need a bump on the head.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does. James 1:22-25