Intersections: Where Faith Meets Life – by Bob Weathers

Here you are, at the doorway of a brand new year. And mostly you assume that 2011 has drifted away and will stay there. The past is the past. But what if that were not the case? What if, at the threshold of the new year, you received an accounting of your decisions for 2011? Do you think it would change the way you live out the next year and the decisions that you would make?

Weathers

In December, a 24-year-old Austrian student discovered that there was a record of his year, and a fairly sizable one at that. Max Schrem requested that Facebook send to him all the personal data it had collected on him for one year, a request permissible under European privacy laws. Max had a mere 234 Facebook Friends, so he didn’t anticipate much.

He was wrong. Facebook sent him a mind-boggling 1,222 pages of data. The pages included private messages, deleted jokes, old chats, past relationships, employment, photos, deleted friends, apps used by friends, and GPS coordinates he had researched. Pretty much everything he had done on or related to Facebook for one year. Just one year.

What about you? Just 2011. Never mind the embarrassments of the year before that. But suppose the record of last year was fresh, delivered on colorful letterhead, for you to mull over, blush over, and to be reminded of every mistake, small or large, that you made? Would it change the decisions you make in 2012? Or, more importantly, the way you make those decisions?

Among the most compelling concepts in Scripture is “stewardship.” We most often associate it with money. But financial stewardship is just a small part of the larger picture that we are stewards of a life that God has given us in service to Him. So our decisions should have one directive, one desire, that is motivated by responsible stewardship of this one life we have: that all we do would please God (1 Corinthians 10:31; 2 Corinthians 5:9).

So what if in 2012 you determined to make it your ambition that every decision, large or small, please God? Imagine what you could do in just one year. What would your record look like then?