The Six Week Sprint

Thanksgiving is the starting gun for the race to the end of the year. I love this season. It seems to me that the month from Thanksgiving through Christmas, and then another week to New Year's Day, is so filled with family, celebration, general hustle and hilarity (yes...and football)  that the days simply fly by. The last twelfth of the year is here and gone before we know it.

Something I anticipate almost as much as the partying with family and friends is time by myself. These are the weeks every year when I do personal reflection and evaluation, and then planning for the next year, should I be favored with 365 more treasured days of opportunity. I look back through the months, weeks, days and moments that have passed, and take an honest 360 degree read: how well did I do? Did I make significant impact with my one and only life? Did the people who count on me for love, direction, support get my best? Do I look and act more like Jesus than I did on January 1? The things I did this past year--are they the significant things in which he would have invested his life?

I always have some moments of chagrin when I acknowledge particular areas I could have an should have done better. But my Heavenly Father is quick to encourage me to press on for the next days. That's a guarantee we only get as committed Christ-followers. We are the only ones who know for certain that the best is yet to come! So, after the evaluation is over, I celebrate my wins, and move on to the next chapter. Every year of my life I want to be more significant for Christ and His Kingdom than the year before. When that is true, every other piece of my life sees me attaining goals and significance. When He is your Life-Director, you do well in all the important arenas you surrender to him.

Years back a young man wrote to Mother Teresa with a compelling question--one that might be on your mind as you contemplate the year that will end and the one that will start in about 35 days. The letter writer knew that this humble woman who reached the world's stage from a life buried in the needs of the most broken in Calcutta's slums was obviously one who would know the answer. "What can I do to have a significant life?"

Mother Teresa's postcard reply was four simple words: "Find your own Calcutta." She was saying, "Find a person or people who need you, and then give yourself to loving them." That's a definite life plan for anyone who wants to actually do something significant with their one and only life.

You don't have to go to Calcutta to find YOUR Calcutta. Mine is right here. Akron, Ohio. All around me are people who are lost, like sheep without a Shepherd. They need truth--direct, honest, loving, delivered with an arm of help around their shoulders. They need someone to believe that they can flourish, and challenge them to it. They need to live with a Big Picture. God works with me to keep my radar tuned for people who need the difference He and I can make. I wake up every day with the expectation, "I am going to make a significant difference today."

But it's not a random expectation. It is a decision I made in the last twelfth of the year before. This is my shot. By God, it will be significant.