New Year - New Vision
Have you ever been so happy to see a new year role around?
Me neither
Now, 2020 wasn't all bad. There was good and there was great and there was a sweet little babe brought into our family but I truly am hopeful for what 2021 can and will look like,
There is still going to be a whole lot of stuff that we cannot control and cannot resolve or work or way out of. But there always are things that we can control - especially the things that happen within the four walls of our homes.
In fact, if this year has taught us anything it should be how important it is to control what goes on, comes into and goes out of our homes.
In our little house, we have a family team mindset. This means that we function as a team at all times and in all situations. We believe that God has a very specific and beautiful design for the family - at the very beginning of the bible we are given a job, to make, cultivate, create, build, steward and tame. To put this another way, we are to take raw materials and make something beautiful.
Adam and Eve's job was to bring the world into order, to take what God gave them in the garden of Eden and go make the rest of the earth look like this. Go into chaos and bring order and beauty (and be fruitful and multiply). How Adam and Eve were to do this was kind of up to them and their God-given skills and abilities. Your family and my family are called to do the exact same thing –we are called to go into all the world, bring beauty out of chaos and make disciples but how this mission is played out is kinda up to us.
This year, instead of thinking of our individual goals and resolutions (which we never actually keep anyway) what would happen if we started thinking bigger, starting thinking biblically and started thinking about each other.
Now I am not knocking goals and aspirations or even individual resolutions but what I am encouraging is that more decisions, more goals and more aspirations are made with the family in mind rather than just ourselves. We live in such an egocentric society that even our own families have become all about the individual instead of about the team. When God wanted to start the story and give a mission He didn’t make one individual, He didn’t start a non-profit, He didn’t get a board of directors. He created a family team.
A family team with a very specific mission and a unique vision.
About three years ago our family created a vision with seven pillars that we would stand on, make decisions with, and keep us grounded in what we believed was our family’s specific purpose. At the risk of sounding dramatic - it changed everything. Our family became a cohesive team that a purpose up on the wall reminding us of who we are, how we were created and what we should be doing.
Maybe, your resolution this year can be to discover what your family can do to fulfill this great (co)mission. Maybe, this year, your family can craft a plan, a purpose, a vision to help get in the game of pointing all we do to God. This year - this year following the craziest and chaotic and self-centred and argumentative and just plain weird year of all our lives – this year needs families who are grounded in Christ, propelled by the Gospel and armed with a vision to go into the chaos and bring order and beauty.
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Click here to get a guide to create your very own family vision.
Read Genesis with us this month!
