With advent now underway, and as we approach the traditional 12 days of Christmas, I’m beginning today a 12-day mini-series of reflections to help you and me prepare for a fruitful 2015.
It’s healthy to explore, and to want to see fulfilled, the desires of our hearts. Early December is a good time to start the process of reflecting on next year’s possibilities.
With this in mind, I’m writing five posts spread over the first 12 days of December, each covering a different aspect of year-ahead visioning. This will be a real-time preparation for 2015 for me personally, and I invite you to join in the journey.
We painstakingly plan our festive fare – let’s prepare our year
Most of us are already looking ahead to Christmas. It’s a time of preparation for that season, not least spiritually as we reflect on the Good News of great joy.
The question occurred to me as I began to write this post: what if we could devote at least the same time and effort in preparing ourselves for the year ahead as we do in painstakingly planning our Christmas celebrations?
In our household, I customarily morph into head chef to create the Christmas dinner. Every year, ‘Ken’s cunning plan’ swings into action. That’s the grid I fill out with all the steps involved in making the festive repast. From coring parsnips and crossing the bottoms of sprouts to the timing and temperatures for slotting the main roast and various trimmings into top or bottom ovens.
All this means envisioning beforehand what you want to serve up for dinner, purchasing all the ingredients, crackers and any missing cookware, and resisting the impulse buy of the discounted red-nosed jumper. Hopefully avoiding, too, the unscheduled trip to the supermarket 5 minutes before Christmas eve closing time for that overlooked but pivotal sauce ingredient.
How would it be if you and I could apply that same enthusiasm to planning ahead for 2015 and helping make this next year among our most fruitful yet?
My own vision for this series is partly summed up in this blog’s subtitle: Live and lead with presence, passion and purpose. I want to help you and me discover and live out passionately our God-given destinies in increasingly closer connection with Him.
In my next post, I’ll look at why planning involves engaging our hearts as well as our heads. And, crucially, why the best laid plans engage God.
I’d love to hear how any of the posts in this series impact you, and any tips or testimonies on how your approach to planning has made a difference.
True Vine Time 