The bible admonishes us not to be anxious for anything. But unfortunately, the Ghanaian approaches a new year with so much anxiety. It does look like we are always dissatisfied with the passing year and on the eve of the new year ,we would wish everything about the old year away and we would address ourselves with what we usually call our new year resolutions which normally are characterized by our high expectations. I think that the Ghanaian’s fixation with new year resolutions is disincentive to him having a peaceful life.
The resort to new year resolution by the Ghanaian actually misleads the Ghanaian to think that once one has not achieved one’s target in a year,then the year has been a failure to the individual. This belief is totally FALSE and unrealistic. This is because in real life,not everything can be achieved in a year. For instance, it would be unrealistic for one to have an objective to put up a building in a year.
Unless, one is expecting some huge lottery win in a year which one might use in beginning and completing a building in the year,we know that putting up a building might take some years. Thus one who decides to build in a year but was able to buy a plot and was able to secure some blocks on the land should be able to congratulate himself for a great beginning towards his building project in the year. One should be able to go to church and dance his modest but important achievement in the course of the year.
Likewise, the one who resolved to buy a car in the course of the year should be able to pat himself at the back even if he was only able to save only a third of the selling price of the car in the market. One should be excited about the passing year even if he couldn’t buy the car because if for nothing, he is a thirty percent chance closer to acquiring his dream car. My argument is that not every dream can be achieved in a year. Unless, one is not setting higher goals for oneself.
The other thing we ought to know is that a good year should not necessarily have each day of the year bright. Some of the days in the year could be dark ,gloomy and unfruitful; but one has to take all the happenings in the year in totallity, to declare his year as blessed or worrisome. You might end the year badly in December, but an honest assessment of the entire year would still give you a cause to rejoice for the year. You might be a farmer who might have lost some farm plants to fire; yet in this same year you planted new cocoa seedlings which are growing well.
You should be able to dance into the new year because you know the years coming for you may be brighter. In deciding whether our year was fruitful or not,we must do what the banks do. In each year,banks post their financial standings and mostly they publicize their huge profits.
Any time we see huge profits posted by banks each year,we believe that the banks’s profits are largely as a result of their prudent investment portfolios. But that is normally not the case. Most banks invest in ventures that bring no profit to the banks. They sometimes give loans to persons without the proper securities.
Thus they are unable to retrieve these loans. These the banks normally called bad debts.But in spite of these bad business deals that banks sometime engage in that bring debts to banks,you would find that at the end of the year,they still post their marginal profits in the year with pride.Life in the year should be assessed just as banks do.
You take stock of your blessings in a year minus your difficulties, then you would surely see that you made profits. That is for those who still are attached to achieving yearly targets. But the real truth is that our life here on earth would not be measured by minutes, hours, days,months or by a year. Our life here would be measured by the sum total of our existence here on earth. Jesus spent 33 years on earth.
We only heard about only three years of his life on earth. And yet, no human being has impacted the human race with his short life on earth than Jesus Christ. God indeed does not deal with us according to our earthly time.He has his own time for us. You may desire something in a year,but God may desire it for you in another year.Take for instance the people of Israel. This was a nation God himself has chosen.
He had promised their forefathers a home for this nation. He had promised them a leader who would lead them away from their earthly hardship. But it has to take about a thousand years for this promise to happen to the people of Israel. Whilst they wait for this promise, they had to live under Egyptian slavery for 430 years. Then when they had been liberated from slavery by Moses , they had to be ruled by different colonial masters for about 650 years.
Actually, the people of Israel had been under Roman Colonial rule for about 62 years when Jesus appeared on the scene. Unfortunately, the people of Israel did not recognize their savior because whilst they were expecting a millitary leader like Joshua, God had sent them a different kind of leader who was more interested in their souls finding peace than leading the people to fight their colonial masters – Rome.God’s ways are not our ways.In life,our real desires have only a 50% chance of materializing. Someone controls everything.
He really doesn’t work with our time. You might be excited by a new year called 2016; but God might just see it as one of the days he has willed for you on earth. Don’t be anxious about a new year; it is just going to be another year. Pastor Mathew Ashimolo would say ‘it ia not over untill it is over’.And he only keeps the time.And he keeps it to his chest.
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