Whenever you begin any resolution, there is a single question which will answer quickly whether your resolution has any chance of lasting success: What is your motivation?
If you are dieting to look like the supermodels in the magazines or because you want a quick fix, you are not likely to get very far. Even if you do lose the weight, you are nearly certain to gain it back very quickly. This is because you wanted a single result (being skinnier) without having a heart for the lifestyle which will maintain your body at a lower weight.
Something similar happens when we desire to become organized. What is your motivation? Do you want to impress your boyfriend in the hopes that he will propose sooner? Are you tired of your parents or roommate nagging you about your messiness? Do you want to find a way to cram all those recent holiday gifts into your already bulging closets? None of these myopic motivations is likely to do much in the way of making you an organized person. However, if you seek a true change of heart and come to desire an orderly life, then you are already well on your way to leading such a life.
We can seek to be neat or orderly for many reasons, some of them perfectly good and some less so. But, there is one excellent reason why we—indeed everyone—should endeavor to lead lives of order, and that is because our God, in whose image we are made, is a God of order.
The God who ordered the seasons, the stars, and every hair on our heads should inspire in us a desire for order, purpose, clarity, cleanliness, simplicity, and rhythm. The closer we draw to Him, the more we marvel at His Creation, the more we are inclined to see the world as an ordered place rather than one of chaos. But, just as moral order requires discipline, so to does it require discipline, hard work, and forethought to create order out of our material lives.
Before we delve into some of the hows of ordering our lives, however, let us take some time to think and pray about the whys. Hopefully, your answers will all lead you back to a Who, our reason for living, our reason for order, our reason for everything.
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I do so look forward to sharing with you all and, God willing, meeting some new friends. May the peace of Christ be with you all.