I’m not usually one to set New Year’s resolutions. I don’t ever do it. It’s not that I don’t have goals or aspirations, but I just don’t feel the need to do that at the beginning of each new year.
However, this year, I have been thinking a lot about spiritual resolutions and goals. We all make them don’t we? We all say, “I’m going to pray more.” Or, “I am going to read my scriptures everyday”, etc. If you are anything like me, you feel like there is always something you can do better when it comes to your own spirituality. But, do we always write down goals for our spiritual selves and stick to them?
One thing that I’ve decided I want to do for my spiritual self this year is to read the book, “Daughters in my Kingdom.” This book was put out in 2011 as a way for the Relief Society to have both the history of Relief Society written down, and a spiritual guide for the women of the church. I haven’t read it. And, since I recently got called into the relief society presidency, I decided that it was time for me to start. My relief society president mentioned that she was reading it, and encouraged us to do so as members of her presidency.
So, I barely started, and ran across a quote right away that I love. On page 5 of the book there is a quote by President Spencer W. Kimball that says, “The cultivation of Christlike qualities is a demanding and relentless task- it is not for the seasonal worker or for those who will not stretch themselves, again and again.”
We cannot expect to become Christlike in one season. We cannot expect to accomplish that task in one year. But, we have to be relentless in our desire and our pursuit. I think that the way to constantly be striving to become like Him is to set goals for ourselves to help us attempt to get close. We will never be perfect in this life. So, we can’t expect that one year of trying to read our scriptures more is going to do the trick. But, we have to expect that each year, there is something more we can do. And hopefully, each year, we are building on the spiritual goals we set for ourselves the year before.
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