Some of us experienced a roll coaster ride in 2011. In January the cars crept up that first agonizing hill with a menacing “clank, clank, clank” your anxiety growing with each “clank.” Nervous giggles were swallowed whole by panicked shrieks as the front cars vanished 
over the apex dragging you with them. Your freefall toward the ground is broken at the last possible second by a series of multi-g generating turns, climbing, falling, your body lifted hard against the shoulder harness then mercilessly shoved back into the seat an instant later. An eternal twelve months later December is rolling to a stop and you find yourself right where you started.
Or perhaps your year was a carousel ride. The January bell rings, your horse lurches forward but quickly smooths into a steady up and down rhythm. A delightful breeze caresses your face as the world around you passes by with a comforting regularity, filled with smiling faces, and the encouraging waves of surrounding friends. Any pre-ride anxiety you may have had melts into a languid sense of well being. A too quick twelve months later December glides to a stop and you find yourself right where you started.
As you look back on 2011 your year may have been brutal and breathtaking, or serene and bucolic. But regardless of how the last year was, every new year begs the questions: “What’s the point?” “Where am I going?” “Does my life have meaning beyond the dispassionate, inexorable cycle of another trip around the sun?”
It may encourage you to know that great people whose lives have left an indelible mark on history struggle finding meaning in life, even Moses. Perhaps it was at the end of a roller coaster year that he cried out to God for himself and his fellow riders, “So teach us to number of our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12) and “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and confirm for us (give permanence to) the work of our hands; yes, confirm the work of our hands.” For Moses the search for life’s meaning is inescapably linked to God. With God we find meaning, what Moses calls “a heart of wisdom”, a meaning that exists beyond our last carnival ride around the sun.
As 2011 rolls to a stop and 2012 nudges forward, don’t settle for another meaningless trip that leaves you right where you started. Seek God, who alone gives the wisdom that brings meaning to life.
Jews demand signs and Gentiles look for wisdom, but we preach Messiah crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Gentiles, Messiah the power of God and the wisdom of God. For, the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength… It is because of him that you are in Messiah Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption, just as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”[1]
[1] 1Corinthians 1:22-25, 30
