Reflections upon a year

I'm sitting on a couch in Vernon on our family's annual ski holidays enjoying what must be the quietest, lamest New Year's Eve of my life. Truth is, I'm quite enjoying it. New Year's is already a rather artificial event determined by some long-dead committee of smart people that decided, hey, 10 days after the winter equinox sounds like a great time to start a new year! And so we have it, a time to reflect back upon the last 365 days and to look forward to another 365. Maybe it is not such a bad thing to do from time to time. The rest of the family has gone to bed in anticipation of an early rise tomorrow to hit the slopes, but the thought of missing the dawn of the new year seems a bit too lame for me, so I sit here waiting and take the time to reflect upon the last...well, 365 days.

2008 has been a good year. In fact, the best one of my relatively short life. In the spirit of all those top ten surveys that circulate around the internet around this time of year, here are my top ten events in the year 2008 (in chronological order):

1. Emerge (UCM Winter retreat. Great people. Great location. Great speaker.)
2. Reading break (a few days at Barnabas, an Emmanuel Ax concert for only $15, time with some close friends out in Langley, and a really awesome wedding up in Kelowna)
3. Mexico Mission trip (quite possibly the 10 best consecutive days of my life. Ask me about it sometime. Or read thomasmsanz.blogspot.com)
4. Painting with Chris Brown and Jesse Beck on a Remdal crew (two of the funniest guys I've met - especially when you put them together)
5. Barnabas 2008 (worked for another summer as videographer at Barnabas Family Ministries. Got to work with two dozen of some of the most amazing people I know. Ask me about it sometime - but be warned that I may talk for hours...easily the best summer of my life. hands down.)
6. Mexico Reunion in Summerland (just an unbelievable weekend - relaxing with some close friends. Nothing better)
7. Passion Vancouver (worshiping with 7000 other university-age Christians in GM Place. Came at just the right time for me. Quite possibly the most powerful evening of 2008)
8. UCM Worship Night (You had to be there - just weeks after Passion, we gathered for an amazing night of worship and testimony. Lots of spontaneity. Lots of community. The best TNT I've attended)
9. Exam time (a bit of a weird entry - not the countless hours of studying, but the weekend I spent visiting friends in Langley before exams started and the many late-night conversations shared with UCM folk during exams.)
10. Barnabas Reunion (After huge amounts of snow forced us to cancel original plans for all the summer staff to get together again at a place on Bowen Island, we crashed at my house for a weekend. Turns out location doesn't really matter. People do.)

And that's that. The year 2008. A good year. The year hasn't always been easy (a few months of what felt like real spiritual drought, being burned out at the beginning of what became an academically very tough semester, the passing on of Mike Meeking, a dear friend and neighbour...) but a bottom ten list would be minuscule and insignificant compared to a top ten, and frankly, is not worth spending much time on. I've been blessed immeasurably, more than I ever asked for or thought possible (I mean this in all seriousness - there has been a whole lot of good packed into one year).

If you care to look for any trend in this last year, it will become obvious in the first five seconds.

Community.

I'm nuts about it. Turns out community is the reason for every entry in my top ten list. Coincidence? Nope. God calls us to be in community - we're wired that way. Community is where we are supposed to be, it's where we thrive. God didn't create humans because he needed something to control. He wanted community. He didn't create Eve so Adam could spread out the workload onto another person. He created Even to give Adam companionship. It's fundamental. My life has been shaped by those around me - and there is a good chance the same is true in your life.

Hey, look at that. My computer clock just told me it's 2009. Happy New Year's everyone.

I wish you all a most wonderful start to a new year. For my part, I will welcome it in with a few turns down a snowy slope, as we do every year. Nothing better.

God bless,

Thomas