Reimagine Your Bucket List

Instead of ringing in 2019 armed with a list of well-meant resolutions or creating an ambitious strategy to accomplish your goals, why not consider a makeover of the Bucket List idea?

This year I’ve resolved: Enough with the endless catalogue of what I dream of doing before I kick the bucket—whether it’s climb the Eiffel Tower or cruise to the San Rafael Glacier. Enough with the grinding to-do lists of what I must accomplish today, tomorrow, or this year. I encourage you to focus on the drops in the bucket as offerings or gifts for the Lord.

In ancient times, worshippers poured out their drink offerings onto the ground. Sometimes they even smashed the goblet, before or after. What a waste. And so insignificant. Or is it?

Life rushes by like a river. An overwhelming tide of activities and obligations and responsibilities. Stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and watch this one droplet plunk from your bucket’s brim. If God counts every sparrow and every hair on your head, then every fleeting minute and every falling drop surely count too.

Droplet Gift #2 – The way to accomplish the big things is to do the little things today. Maybe it’s only a drop in the bucket, but…

• Take that walk (it acts as medicine).
• Save that dollar (it adds up).
• Use that moment (it also adds up).
• Say that prayer (it does matter).
• Write that note, speak that kind word… (if not now, when?)
• Sing that song (it’s a sacrifice of praise).

This year let’s spill out the buckets of our lives, one droplet at a time, until they’re emptied…for God’s glory. The Redeemer not only accepts our broken-bottle lives and puts them back together, He collects every drop in His bottle (Ps. 56:8).

Go ahead and read over your Bucket List once in a while. But in the meantime, pray instead: Lord, don’t take me home until I’ve…

• Finished all you’ve given me to do,
• Written the final page of my story,
• … And poured the last drop from my bucket.