Don't forget to look behind you

I don't know that I'm much into New Year's Resolutions, but I love a do-over.

You know, when you serve a tennis ball into the net and the person says, "go ahead, take a do-over".....or you're playing one of those basketball hoop games at Chuck E Cheese and creaming your kid brother and you have mercy on him and tell him to take another shot at it. It's a do-over.

I think that's one reason why I love college ministry and the academic calendar - - every semester you get a clean slate - new professors, new classmates, new classes - and you get another shot at doing things better or differently.

But sometimes I'm so anxious to leave the mistakes or difficulty or pain of one season, that I jump into the next without really learning or processing....and that's a huge mistake....because I sure don't want God to have to teach me those same things again :)

As you get ready for a new year, it's important to reflect on what God's been doing leading up to this point, and so for college students and many others, the Christmas Break is a great time to do some thinking and asking God about what he's up to in your life, and perhaps even set some goals or at least set a course for the kind of year you/God wants 2012 to be.

The Magruder family will be practicing this in a very simple way, with sparkling grape juice and something I found on Pinterest, a New Year's Reflection.

Fellow campus minister, Mike Armstrong, had some great thoughts focusing on 4 words or themes to sum up the direction for 2012

Brandon Smith did a series of posts this week on reflecting and setting the direction of 2012:
Measuring Progress
Find Your Themes
Setting Goals

So sit down with your journal and do some thinking about this past year....flip through the pages of 2011 and be reminded of some of the big things God did and revealed to you...then call up a friend or your campus minister and share with them over coffee (the really chocolatey kind...the kind that doesn't really taste like coffee at all).

Happy Do-Over!!