Every year I always like to do a personal assessment of myself.  This means looking at the good things, which worked out well.  It also means looking at the bad things that did not go as well.  Sometimes things go poorly for reasons outside our control.  Sometimes things go well and we had nothing to do with it, but that is not common.

2024?

I’m not too sure how I would assess 2024 as a whole.  There was good; there was bad.  There was a lot of neither.  I finished reading the Bible again; I try to read through the Bible each year, reading a different translation each year.  This year it was the New Revised Standard Version.  That was different.  Overall, it was good, so that was a positive this year.

I finished several workbooks and books that were Bible-based.  Those are helpful in a variety of ways, depending on the topic.  One was the difference between the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ.  I thought that would be a really short workbook, but there was more than I expected.  I also read a book that worked it way through the Sermon on the Mount.  That was just a whole bunch of good things to think about.  I also read some non-Bible-based books as well, and I have to admit that I feel a little guilty when reading something like that.  The book itself might be fine, but I’m taking away from reading something that would otherwise help me learn more about God, or grow closer to Him.  I’m not suggesting that you should never read a book that is not about God; I just feel a little guilty about it myself, even though I know there is nothing wrong with it.

My health is still good.  I still exercise regularly.  I am very blessed to be as healthy as I am at this stage of my life.  And expressing my appreciation to God is an important part of my life.  So that is also going well.  I get sick very infrequently, which has the side benefit of missing worship services very rarely - another blessing.

What’s New for 2025?

The easy answer is that I just don’t know yet.  I have recently started trying to spend more time reading, which I want to continue for 2025.  I spent a lot less time working this year, which has been nice, but that is one of those things that I have little, if any, control over.  If work gets busier, I will get busier, but that is generally out of my control, so it is something I don’t really worry about.

I plan on reading through the Bible again in 2025, and I already have my next translation picked out.  I should probably pick a book of the Bible and do some deeper study into it.  That might be Psalms. 

For about five years now I have been working on a Bible study series that I tentatively call, “The Big Picture.”  It’s nowhere near being completed, but I made progress in 2024, and I hope to make more progress in 2025.  It is a passion project, and it is probably the only thing I care about finishing before I die.  I don’t think anything else matters as much, in terms of things I would like to do or get done.  Are there other things I would like to do before I die?  Yes.  But nothing else comes close in terms of how important it is to me.

Conclusion

Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow may never arrive.  Today is all we have.  I’m not suggesting we should never make any plans, but clearly we need to live in the now(Matt. 6:34).  That being said, “a failure to plan, is a plan to fail.”  It can be helpful to set goals, or even just know that we need to work on something, especially ourselves(Phil. 3:12).  If we are trying to get better, we will likely get worse(in physics, that is the law of entropy).  So let’s work on improving ourselves, not so that we will be able to earn eternity with God(we won’t), but because we want to be more like Him.  He is perfect.  How could we not want to be more like Him?