I like setting goals and taking stock of my life periodically to make sure I’m headed in the right direction. The new year is a great time to do that, not to make empty resolutions but instead to realign your course. This entire holiday season, I’ve been in a reflective mode as I ponder this. Tomorrow, we will all begin a fresh year and decade. But Steve and I have a unique opportunity to also reflect on how we want to live out this new chapter we’re beginning. We’ve been in our new town exactly one month today.

Life and death issues have become more poignant this Christmas. Six days before Christmas, a parent’s worse nightmare came true for a dear couple from our former church in California. Their two college-age sons were seriously injured in a horrific car crash, rendering both of them in comas, fighting for their lives. (The youngest son is still in a coma.) The same-age man who hit them died instantly. Both families’ lives will never be the same again. Today I received the news that another young man, son of good friends I served with in Romania, a man who was an extraordinarily sweet-natured child, was killed in another car accident. Killed.

Besides the pervasive heaviness in my spirit, this affects my goal-setting in reminding me that none of us know how many days we have. That puts a fervency to my plans. What does God want me to do this year? How does He want me to order my days? What should be my priorities? And why has He allowed me to live a carefree life when so many of my friends have not?