How often do we inflict burdens of our own making on ourselves? Expectations of who we should be, how much we should accomplish—and how fast. Especially now, near the end of a year and the beginning of the next, I find myself measuring the last twelve months. Passing judgement on how I’ve performed. Plotting out how to be more productive, more successful, more EVERYTHING next time.
Reflection is good, and so is making plans. I’m not about to tell you (or myself) to stop setting goals and trying to meet them.
But if you’re anything like me, a goal or New Year’s resolution can quickly become a self-created law. And much like the Pharisees who piled hundreds of new commandments atop the original ten, our self-imposed expectations can become a heavy weight to bear.
“So it makes no sense to me that some of you are testing God by burdening His disciples with a load that neither our forefathers nor we have been able to carry. No, we all believe that we will be liberated through the grace of the Lord Jesus—they also will be rescued in the same way.”
Peter speaking in Acts 15:10-11 (VOICE)
No matter how perfectly I craft my goals at the beginning of a new year, by December I have always fallen short somewhere. Granted, I’m often further along than I would have been without a goal at all, but the point is, I do fall short. And in that gap between where I landed and where I meant to be, there lies the disappointment, the condemnation, the hundreds of “Yes, but not quites…”
