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According to classic Christian theology, we live our lives coram deo, literally, “before God.” God is present with us, not just in our religious activity or our private lives, but everywhere. Our entire lives, including our work as leaders, are coram deo, “before God.” Thus, we have a choice about how we will live coram deo.

We who call ourselves Christians are to live in the world in such a way that God is truly and obviously present. We are to be the “temple” of the living God, the “place” where God can be found in this world. We are to do this in our private lives and our public lives, in our families and our workplaces, in our neighborhoods and schools.

Today is January 31st, the last day of 2018. This is a good day not only to prepare for New Year’s Eve celebrations but also to reflect on the last year. How was your year? How were you this year? What went well? What went poorly? What would you like to learn from the past year so that you might live more fully and productively in 2019? I find a passage from Ephesians to be a helpful way to think about the last year.

You may want to ask yourself today: Am I living the gospel I believe? Is the good news of Jesus evident in the way I treat others?

Wisdom will help you to see accurately how you’re living. Wisdom is not mere knowledge. Rather, it is deeper understanding, knowledge permeated by good judgment, knowledge shaped by experience. Wisdom is the ability to see what’s right, what’s important, what’s beneficial, what’s best.

Your calling tells you that you have a divine Caller.

Clarity of purpose helps us to flourish as we live, not primarily for ourselves, but for something much larger than ourselves.

Here we are at another Advent season—when we commemorate the anticipation of the birth of Jesus Christ. To set the scene biblically, it was a time of great darkness in the earth, and more specifically in the Jewish community. They had been waiting for the arrival of their Savior with the expectation that he would turn the tables of their misfortunes. Exile, captivity, oppression, the pervasive humiliation of second-class status—over time, these feelings compiled to birth... hope.