People talk about resolutions in January. This year I will burn off those Christmas desserts, tear up the credit cards and live a wonderful life. One pastor’s New Year’s resolution was to get to know his deacons. His next year’s resolution was to find a new church. Are resolutions a pointless ritual initiated by calendars, or a great time to reconsider our own lives and reset our course?

The celebration of the next year is a great time to examine the old one. This examination can be called a personal inventory or a cost analysis. Many successful people do what is called zero-based thinking, in which they examine all that they are doing to see what is working and what is not. In Christian language, it would be choosing to examine your life according to truth or to continue in the tradition of how you have always done it.