The end of one year and the beginning of another provides us with a natural time for making new commitments that we would like to carry out over the next year.  One of the key principles of goal setting is evaluation. At the end of December every T.V network and radio station out there has a countdown of the top “Something.”  The yearend countdown has infiltrated our culture to the point that a person could go insane from over exposure, and do something crazy like make up his own top ten list and force everyone to read it.

My Top Ten Moments from 2011

10. Finding Out Amanda Was Pregnant

• ·         Nine months is way longer than it sounds.

9.  Seeing my parents with their first grandchild

•    I think my mom would have stayed with us until Mallory graduated from high school if we let her.

8.  Suckering Pastor Robb into trying to drink a gallon of milk in an hour

• ·         This was followed by the much less satisfying… Listening to Pastor Robb try to convince himself he could do it if he did things a little differently next time even after he failed miserably.

7.   Making a toy chest from scratch for my daughter

• ·          I think the handyman gene skipped my generation…

6.  Watching the Yankees Lose to the Tigers in the ALDS

• ·         For one year I have bragging rights over all Yankee fans!

5. Witnessing the Lions and Eagles trading places in the NFC

• ·         I have bragging rights over Eagles fans too!

4. Hearing the Nurse say…. It’s a Girl

• ·         The next phrases out of my mouth were,  “Are you sure?”, and “I guess we need to buy a shotgun.”

3. Getting to the point where I could run three miles without stopping

• ·         Considering I couldn’t run to the end of the driveway when I started this was quite the achievement.

2. Watching the Lions play on Monday night for the first time.

• ·         Before this year I was begging to think the NFL would give the lions to another city… Pastor Robb constantly reassured me that nobody would want them, so I had nothing to worry about.

1. Witnessing the birth of my first Child.

• ·         Something I’ll never forget… Ever!

I hope you enjoyed my attempt at comedy. On a serious note, it is important that before we set new goals, and move on to the next year that we take time and evaluate the previous year. Think about what you did particularly well, where did you drop the ball, and how could you have done better. I would encourage you to not look back on just your family life or your professional life, but your spiritual life as well. I can think back to times this past year where I was really cruising along spiritually and times when I was struggling.  It is important that I look back on those times and figure out what I did right and what I need to work on. The Christian faith is a journey and in order to make sure we are progressing on that journey we need to sit down and honestly evaluate our spiritual lives, and then set new goals we would like to achieve spiritually over the next year.

September brings about quite a few emotions in us; some are excited for football, back to school, or the possibilities of a new beginning.  If you’re like me you are ecstatic because fall means cooler temperatures, new T.V episodes, and football.  For others, it brings about a bit of gloom, because temperatures drop, days get shorter, and they are forced to give up the carefree nature of summer for a more demanding schedule.  However these emotions are secondary to the new college student. September of their freshman year signifies an end to everything comfortable and familiar, an end to life as they know it. They are forced to make new relationships in a new environment with new expectations, all of which can leave them feeling alone, scared and frustrated.  As the college student progresses on they often make new relationships, they learn to rise to the new expectations, and they learn to adjust to their new surroundings, but even thought they adjust its still not quite the same as it was before.   If I were to sum up my college years into one statement it would be this, “never have I been surround by so many people yet felt so alone.”  I have come to realize that the reason for this was because I was missing the close connections I had created with my fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ at my church.  I became great at shallow relationships but was missing the connection with fellow believers.  Because I had two places to call home, both college and my parent’s house, I felt I couldn’t fully connect to a church body.  Luckily there were people from my congregation who would send me letters and cards and little care packages to let me know I was still cared for and a part of their family.  Those little gifts meant the world to me. 

                I say all this to inform you of a new program we are starting at St. Andrew.  We have more college age students, & recent college graduates than at any other time in my tenure hear at St. Andrew.  Up to this point I feel I have failed to help them stay connected to St. Andrew. This is why beginning this fall we will be starting a program called “College Connections.”  The program is designed to connect an adult or family from St. Andrew with a college age student or recent college graduate, with the intent to let them know they are loved, cared for, and still a valued part of this congregation.  If you would like to make an impact in the lives of a college age student please email me at deering.adam@gmail.com.  Also, If you know of a college age student or recent college graduate who has ties to St. Andrew please let me know.  I have a list of people but I could use help making sure we get to as many people as possible.

“ 11 Teach these things and insist that everyone learn them. 12 Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity. 13 Until I get there, focus on reading the Scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers, and teaching them.”

1 Timothy 4:11-13

I can honestly say that I have been on both sides of this passage. I have been looked down upon in my younger years because of my age, and I have written off young people from doing certain tasks because of their age.  I know, I work with youth so I’m supposed to think the best of our teens. However, sometimes the more you know about an age group the more you allow the stereotypes to influence your thinking.  For every time I have been right about a stereotype of a young person, there are countless times I have been proven wrong. Unfortunately, there have been many times when students have not been given the opportunity to prove me wrong. Even worse yet I think we as adults contribute to the stereotypes because we do not provide them with opportunities to show us what they are capable of. If you’re like me, you like things done a certain way and it’s hard for you to give up control and let someone else do a job because you worry that it may not come out as polished as you would like or there is a greater risk of failure all together.  I find that every time I get over myself and provide a student with an opportunity to show me what they are capable of I am blown away by the results.   By not giving our youth opportunities, we are handicapping them from moving forward successfully into adulthood.  I can remember as a teen working on projects with my father in the garage, and my job was always to hold the flashlight.  I hardly received instructions on what we were doing, or an explanation as why we were doing it, so now as an adult I am left to figure things out for myself because my father felt it would have taken too long to teach me to do it or that I may have made the problem worse.  Admittedly, there were many times growing up that I tried to fix something on my own and made the problem worse, but that does not mean that the desire and drive to learn and to be productive was not there, I simply lacked the knowledge.

         I deal with youth on a daily basis, and one of the things I have to constantly remind myself of is that it is far more important for me to teach and guide a young person than it is to have something done my way. I want to encourage you to find your role in developing the young people of today. The amount of youth willing to help and to be productive members of our society far outweighs the number of people willing to teach and guide them.  It may be a little more trying and time consuming on the front end, but I can tell you that when you see a student whom you care about and spent time working with succeed on their own, the rewards are far greater than the upfront cost!

Matthew 6:25-27

^“25 “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? ²⁷ Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?”

                This verse took on new meaning to me this morning as I was shoveling out from the snowstorm that fell upon our region last night.  Because I am a huge kid at heart and get completely caught up in snow storms, I was constantly looking outside last night to check the weather conditions, hoping for a huge pile of snow this morning when I awoke. In my snooping throughout the evening, I saw the storm throw pretty much everything Mother Nature had on our area. I saw rain, sleet, snow, heard large gusts of wind, I saw the snow falling in three different directions all within the same hour.  As if all that wasn’t enough I experienced the rare “THUNDERSNOW” as channel 6 news dubbed it, thunder during a snow storm. All in all it was a pretty intense storm. 

                Then this morning came the great excavation of my cars. As I shoveled the sun came out and I began to hear birds chirping. I have no idea why it took me till I was 29 to ask this question but I wondered how do the birds that stay north for the winter survive the harsh colds, and intense storms that the northeast is known for.  The only thing that could come to mind was Matthew 6:25-27. I have no idea how the birds survive, but I do know that God takes care of them, and if God takes care of them how much more will he take care of us. Yet another reminder to me that God has promised to take care of me and that I have no need to let worry in, because he will take care of me.