Pastor's Ponderings

One of the things I have to do each year in January is an extensive report on the church that ends up being printed in the Annual Conference Journal and in the whole of the United Methodist Church’s database. As I can’t help but compare how we fare this year as opposed to last year and how Aztec United Methodist Church compares with the other churches in our New Mexico Annual Conference, it got me to wondering about success. What does it really mean to be successful? Some say success means accepting yourself for who you are. Jesus seems to me to be saying that we should not just be celebrating who we are, but celebrating the person God has made you to be and the ways in which we have found God’s ways and walked in them.

Some say success means knowing all the ways in which you are already a winner. Jesus says that success means that sometimes an illness, a cancer, or a rejection puts you in touch with gifts and graces you didn’t know were yours.

Some say success is being able to lose your career or your job without losing yourself. I find Jesus saying over and over again that success is being willing to lose yourself in order to find yourself.

Some say that success is taking good of yourself. Jesus over and over again in the scriptures says that success is giving yourself to others, to your community, and especially to the lonely, the sick, the homeless, the poor and the hungry.

Some say success is putting balance in your life. My study of scriptures in both the Old Testament and the New keeps pointing to God having first place in your life. That is the only way to really be successful.