I just told myself to hang in there ... and hopefully get some momentum, and I did.
-- Pete Sampras

Here we are a quarter into the new year. It’s a new season, the last frost has come and gone, and we’re looking forward to opening our windows and letting the fresh air in.

Checking our new year to-do-list of resolutions and solutions, 1) we can now move our exercise regime outside. Since we’ve been keeping fit so well and hard, the 10 miles per day we do on the inside track will feel like a fresh breeze when we run them outside;

2) since daylight savings time started, we’ve risen in time with the sun and commenced our ritual morning prayer and Bible study, then listened to Bishop Jakes on the television while we dressed and got our day started; and

3) the weight we’ve lost and body we’ve toned are worth showing off and preserving. With the change in season, we can now eat even lighter foods and more fresh fruit. Eating what we ate before January then lying down and taking a good nap now feels so sinful and disloyal, we can’t imagine how we ever let ourselves do that in the first place.

Stop right there? Why? You’ve lost the momentum for all that? Back in mid-March? Well, join the club. The momentum fell away for many of us reading this scribe even before March.

Somehow we got sidetracked away from the resolutions and solutions we zealously began at the beginning of the new year. Somewhere along the way we lost our momentum and energy for completing the goals we aggressively set and started. Perhaps we got bored. Maybe we realized we bit off more than we could really chew. Maybe we had no support in accomplishing our goals. Maybe we weren’t in the right frame of mind when we made them, or we were attempting the goals for the wrong reasons. Or, maybe we believed we had arrived at the intended goal so we decided to rest awhile. Or, just maybe we forgot we’d made the plans to begin with. Whatever the reasons we lost our drive, we’ve ultimately given in to the purpose and devices of the enemy and here we are a quarter into the year and little has changed in and for our lives.

So the resolution was to read the Bible cover to cover and you’re stuck somewhere in 2 Samuel taking as long as the Jews took to get out of the wilderness. Well, they finally made it out. Keep reading, you’ll make it out of the Old Testament, too.

Your plan was to take off 25 pounds before summer began, but you noticed you weren’t losing any mass. In fact, your mass was becoming muscle, and while pleasing, you still wanted to lose weight. Becoming discouraged, you decided to slow down to an abrupt stop. Now when you exercise, the blood circulating in your legs makes you itch so badly, you put off exercising until you can handle the burn. Today, handle the burn.

You’d planned to save lots of money to take a great vacation this year, but between the new tires, a brake job, 2 root canals, and simply trying to feed your family squarely each day, the money you’ve saved will only get you a trip to the neighborhood park. Keep saving anyway.

We’re only a quarter into the year. Even if the momentum of your resolutions and solutions has waned, you’re not doomed or done unless you completely give up and, if you recall, giving up was not on your new year to-do-list of resolutions and solutions, so there’s no momentum for that.

Sadiqqa © 2007