2006 - the year of ask, seek and knock

The blog world is popping with peoples’ New Year’s resolves. I too have my list of resolutions which, lucky for you, I’m choosing to keep to myself (and it’s safer for me that way as I won’t be called to account by some errant reader in a far off time like May or July and asked how I’m doing!) But one thing I do each new year in addition to making resolutions, is to choose a life Bible verse or passage for the year.

I don’t know where I got this idea (and I’m sure I didn’t think it up by myself), but for quite a few years now, one of the things I do at the beginning of each year is to pick some Bible verses which will set the tone of the year for me, and become a combination meditation / study focus, memorization project as well as a prayer.

Choosing that passage is a different process each year. As I’m usually on the lookout for it towards the end of the old year, sometimes I have it all chosen and ready before the calendar changes. At other times, I’m well into the new year before I have it picked out. And although the passage’s subject matter differs widely from year to year, when I find it, it jumps out at me and settles into my spirit with the rightness of benediction.

Here are some verses I have picked (or picked me) in the past:
2003: Matthew 6:33,34
2004: John 10:1-10
2005: Ephesians 2:10 (Amplified version)

This year I was planning to mull over my decision during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Then we got called out of town and I thought – when will I do this?!


I needn’t have worried. Because during my quiet time one day last week in Kelowna –January 2nd to be exact– reading through the Sermon on the Mount, I re-met these words of Jesus from Matthew 7: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (vs. 7,8) and I knew - this is it!

Already I’ve been enriched by digging around in these concepts. It’s going to be an exciting year!