By Richard Harp
This past year has come and gone like a vapor. So, with the new year I am making something I call a “Vapor Resolution.”
If you get the chance to hear the New Year’s countdown, it gives you cause to join in and may even give you pause for thought. While the ball drops and numbers ring out, I think about the potential of the coming year.
Ten… “What will this year be like?”
Nine… “What new adventure awaits me in 2019?”
Eight… “Will I be experiencing my greatest joys this year?”
Seven… “Will I realize hardship that will bring grief?”
Six… “Will I achieve the goals I set out for myself?”
Five… “Will this be the best year of my life so far?”
Four… “Will I help more people this year than last year?”
Three… “Will I be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within me?”
Two… “Will I help those closest to me to see God in my actions?”
One… “Will this be the last countdown I experience in this life of vapor?”
This last musing may seem negative or even come across a little morbid. Why would I allow my thoughts to center ondeath? Because life is a vapor. Scripture emphasizes this:
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:13-17).
James is telling us that living life according to our own will profits us nothing if we are not living according to God’s. Jesus said it best,
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul” (Mark 8:36, 37)?
There is nothing better we can do on this earth than get prepared for eternity.
John the apostle gives us insight into how we can be prepared in 2019.
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world.And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15-17).
We need a balance when it comes to our New Year’s Resolutions. Are we resolute in the fact that we may or may not have a year to spend on this earth? The blessing we find from these passages is to ask for the Lord’s will to be done in the year we spend. Will you trust God in the time of plenty and the time of need? What is God’s Will for your life in 2019? Will you make the “Vapor Resolution?”
A Note From the Harp
Richard preaches for the Deerfoot Church of Christ