Cleaning Up Bottles With You

Happy 2019! In honour of New Year's Day, I've been listening to the song with that very name by Taylor Swift. One line of the lyrics always stands out to me:

I want your midnights, but I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day.

See, we want the glamour and glory of life, but how many of us are willing to stick around for the hard times, the messy times, the clean up on aisle nine? We want the promotion without the hard work, the six pack without the good eating and exercising habits. We want to have our cake and eat it, without the preparation and the cleaning that is required.

This year, I want to do the hard things that need to be done. I aim to not rely on my fickle feelings. Yes I look forward the highlights and the success, but also, I want to do the 'average' and 'lame' things of life so well.

As it says in 1 Timothy 4 below, there is hope of an incredible promise of life that is ours for the taking. And we can take hold of the fullness of this life by training ourselves in godliness. As with all training, sometimes it won't be fun, we will be stretched and exhausted and disheartened at times. But man, is it worth it. Hold onto the hope, the hope that anchors your soul.

Train yourself in godliness. Exercise for the body is not useless, but godliness is useful in every respect, possessing, as it does, the promise of Life now and of the Life which is soon coming. Faithful is this saying and deserving of universal acceptance: and here is the motive of our toiling and wrestling, because we have our hopes fixed on the ever-living God, who is the Saviour of all mankind, and especially of believers. 

I don't know about you, but I sure want the midnights AND I want the mundane day-to-day moments of cleaning up bottles with Jesus every day in 2019 and always.