Every year I write a reflection on the old year and an intention for the new year. But 2020 has been so far from normal that it has made me reevaluate “normality”, though I have always been an advocate of the idea that life is never a single upward trajectory, but more like a winding river that sometimes appears to go off course but always arrives at our true destination.
Anyway, my 2020 word of the year was faith, based on the idea that I live by the faith of the Son of God (Colossians 3.6). I wanted to have faith that God has a plan for my life, I wanted to have faith in spiritual things unseen by this world, I wanted to have faith that God will help me in everything I do.
2020 tested that idea, and I have learnt so many life lessons I hope will stay with me for the rest of my life (we will hopefully only live through one pandemic in our lifetimes, right???). And for a few days, I have wondered what my 2021 word of the year will be. The new year doesn’t feel like a new year; not that I expected it to, but with the continuing pandemic, it doesn’t feel like turning over a new chapter as it does otherwise (even if we know that a new year has a certain sense of arbitrariness to it).
I have now decided that my word needs to be perspective. It is also based on a verse, that we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4.18). This is important to me because I often get caught up in the transient, material, temporal things of this world, but the most important thing in my life must be what is unseen. Life is short.
It’s difficult, especially when I want to keep up with the latest books or tv, or I get despondent about world politics, or I try to achieve so many things in my life that the meaningful things get left out, or I sweat over the little things.
But, as I’ve learned in 2020, if I can keep my perspective on God, on my spiritual life, on the things that truly matter, then I’ll be just fine. I will be able to live my life with integrity and live my life well.
