A few things which I regard as very important as we start on a new year

A while ago, I wanted something from a certain shop. I used to call there regularly. This particular day, however, when I tried to open the door, to my great surprise, it was locked. I knocked several times, thinking that the shopkeeper for once had overslept. Eventually, after banging at the door several times, it was opened and I could see that the shopkeeper was very wide awake indeed.

“What do you want?” he asked angrily. And then after a second thought, he said, “Alright, come in quick.”

As soon as I was inside, he locked the door again.
There were no other customers inside only myself, but there were two or three other people behind the counter, all very much occupied.

“My word, what’s going on in here?” I asked. “You all seem very busy.”

The shopkeeper answered, “It’s stock-taking time here I’m afraid, and we are closing the shop today so that we can get on with the job.”

Of course, I felt somewhat guilty and offered my apologies for interfering with their work.

Now, don’t you think we ought to do something like that at the beginning on a new year? I mean, spiritually, of course. Ought we not to look into our hearts and thoroughly examine ourselves to find out how it is with us as we face a new year?

The times are evil. There’s not much shine on our spiritual life is there? Our stock has surely got very low and the prospects are not at all bright. Let us therefore take stock of our resources. For in a certain sense, life is a business concern. A book was publishes several years ago and its title was: This Business of Living.

“What do you do when you set about this complicated job of stock-taking?” I asked the shopkeeper. “What is the first thing you do?”

“Well,” he said, “the first thing I do is to close the shop for a day or two. There is a notice in the window to that effect and obviously you hadn’t seen it, or you wouldn’t have been banging on the door a few minutes ago. It’s quite impossible to get on with this stock-taking with customers coming in twos and threes all day long. So we close the shop.”

A very good idea, don’t you think? We too could do something like that. Shut everything out; forget for a while the cares of the world, the problems of every day life, so that we can give our whole attention to the things that matter.

Wordsworth, in one of his poems, says:

‘The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers’

How true that is. In order to examine ourselves thoroughly and take stock of our spiritual resources, we must shut the door tight and lock it so that we can concentrate on the priorities of life. So, the first thing we’ve got to do is to shut the door; close the shop.

“What’s the next step?” I asked the shopkeeper. “What do you do next?”

“Well,” he said, “we make an exact list of everything we’ve got in the shop. By doing this, we find out what we are most in need of. We find, for example, that we have a good stock of one thing but that we are dangerously short of something else.”

We too must do something like that – take stock of all that we have; count our blessings, as it were. No shop is ever empty of goods. Neither is life. We all have what we might call assets – things that are of value to us and to other people. Health – that is one very precious thing. Food and clothing – they’re two others. We need all these things. We have friends, families, sponsors, and the good things of this world. Let us be grateful for what we have already in stock.

But to know just what we have in stock is only part of the purpose of stock-taking. The main purpose is to give us some idea of the things we are short of; the things we must order for the future.

Some things are more in demand than others. Go to any shop and you will find that there are many commodities there that are only asked for occasionally. But there are other things, like bread and milk, for instance, that we must keep constantly in stock - things that are needed for day-to-day living.

Life is like that too. Food and clothing, health and happiness – we want all those things. But if we examined ourselves in this manner, we might discover that there are some things that we are short of, things that are we are desperately in need of – such as discovering the secret of serenity or experiencing wholeness. You might have everything else – good name, character, wealth, friends, and all that. Yet, that is not enough. There is one thing you haven’t got – wholeness maybe - and until you get that, life is no good.

There is a lot of cheap stuff on the market today – wealth, pleasure, and so on, and we are in danger of cramming our lives with these things. But there are other things too, things that neither moth nor rust can corrupt; things that will stand us in good stead in this life: faith, hope, trust and love.

There was one other thing the shopkeeper told me. “When stock-taking,” he said “I also get a chance to clean the shop from top to bottom. You have no idea how much dust there is here, and I take this opportunity to clean the place out.”

This is another thing we could do to our advantage. When we examine ourselves, and take stock of our lives, a lot of ugly things will no doubt come to light. Habits that we have formed unawares – they will all come to light and we shall feel ashamed of ourselves.

Here is a chance for us at the beginning of a new year to cleanse our minds and souls and to rededicate ourselves to that which is pure and good and leads to sound recovery.


I wish you all a happy New Year and all that's good for 2012.