A New Year's Resolution
 

Every new year, we consider ways to improve ourselves and become, essentially, better servants of the Lord. And while each of us may know the specific ways we need to improve, I think there is a general way we can all look at the topic of improving. Maybe this will be useful when setting your goals for this year.

See, the human tends to think from one of two places -- the heart or the mind (metaphorically speaking of course). Actually, this corresponds to the two halves of the brain, but it feels like heart and mind -- we refer to it as the emotions and the intellect.

I think the ideal way for us to approach life is to have these in balance -- to look at things objectively and rationally while really being motivated to action by love. This means not being overrun by our natural tendencies of anger, drama, and judgment -- we need to have our intellects take us beyond this, realizing first that there are usually so many reasons behind things people do, we shouldn't react from our gut; and second, from the fact that Jesus would have us love someone no matter what. Recognizing an evil action is one thing -- that is a matter of intellect. But we ought to still love a person and pray for their betterment. I believe that's what "turning the other cheek" is really all about -- much like the law of forgiving someone not 7 times, but 70 x 7 times!

For those of us who are natural intellects, looking at things objectively  is not as much a challenge. But the challenge for an intellect is to bring the heart into activity -- to make sure that we are not staring at people with a cold, hard truth.

For those of us who tend to feel a lot of love for others, we may not see things too objectively, and we may not know the best ways to direct our love.

For new years, I think it's important to decide what kind of person we are and to start developing the side of us that's less developed. Intellects can work on loving more; loving people can work on the intellect. And as we balance the two, I believe we'll be able to serve in a much higher capacity for our Lord.