With the turn of a new year comes the opportunity for evaluating our past, present, and future. Rather than floating along through life as though little is at stake, God desires that we walk in his wisdom. The prayer of the psalmist should be our own:

“Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

But how do we gain such wisdom? God is the beginning and end of all life-giving truth:

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5).

God graciously spoke to us through the Bible.

He also established that the testimony of the created world serves as a magnet, pulling our mind and heart to Him. Mountains, oceans, galaxies, animals, and plants—these all speak of a powerful and magnificent Creator (Psalm 19:1).

Also, our daily routines should awaken us to our dependence on God. Several times a day our stomachs shout, “Feed me!”  Sleep overtakes us each night. But why? Why do we have to submit to these demands?

We submit because we are human. We are created with God-dependence written into our muscles and bones. Daily, these physical limitations remind us that we are not God. No matter how important we may think we are, at least once a day Earth continues to travel the galaxy even as we slumber and snore.

But it is not so with God. He never sleeps. That is why David can sing:

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8).

David could sleep in peace because He knew that the sovereign God needs no sleep.

So, sleeping and eating are tools to direct our thoughts toward God. But what other tools are there for our use? Francisco de Zurbarán painted St. Francis Contemplating a Skull, teaching us that death itself is a powerful prompt for contemplating eternity.

Zurbarán lived in the 17th century, a time of religious wars and political upheaval. Even with the beginning of modern science, the average human lifespan was still under 30 years.

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet when Zurbarán was just a boy. Do you remember the graveside scene in the play, where the young prince comes alongside some gravediggers?  In a day before steel coffins, Hamlet picks up a skull from the dirt and asks the diggers to whom the skull belonged. Hamlet was amazed when they told him the skull was from a man named Yorick, for this was the court jester who had entertained him as a boy.

Hamlet says:

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?”

Hamlet meditates further, contemplating how even powerful men like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar could not escape the indignity of death. He remarks that the dust of Caesar could at this very moment be the dirt that keeps wind from coming through the bricks in a home.

Shakespeare and Zurbarán produced their works with like-mindedness, one with a pen and one with a brush. Both Hamlet and Francis contemplated human fragility and mortality as a result of looking at a skull. Where there was once life, now there is just bone. Just as death came to the skull’s owner, so too shall death come to the skull’s holder.

How are you spending your life?  Hear the Apostle Paul’s admonition to “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).

Perhaps you live as though this world is all there is to be had. Paul reasoned that, “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (1 Corinthians 15:32).

But we, following Paul’s own conclusion, know that the dead will be raised. We know that there is life after death. We know that Christ died on the cross and was buried, but His body did not rot in the grave. We know that God raised Him to life again, brought Him back to heaven, and that He will come again in glory and power. We know that the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).  We know that God will judge all mankind by the standard of Jesus Christ, and that only those found in Christ will receive salvation from the punishment of sin (Acts 10:42; 2 Timothy 4:1; Revelation 20).

As a new year begins, give some time to prayer and meditation on your physical mortality. This may sound like a depressing proposal, but it should not be so for a Christian. Be sober-minded about the length of your life, especially in light of the length of eternity.

Perhaps you should spend an afternoon walking around a cemetery, reading the gravestones and calculating how many of the people buried in the ground lived lives shorter than your own. Consider how each one of the deceased had the opportunity to do just as you are doing now. They each had the opportunity to consider their life in light of eternity. They could have read verses like Hebrews 9:27:

“Just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”

How they responded to such knowledge at that time determined where their soul resides even now.

While you are still in the land of the living, give thought to the things of Christ and follow him . . . today!

Only one life, will soon be passed. Only what’s done for Christ will last!

In a filing (PDF) with the Federal Communications Commission dated December 21, AT&T made very clear their desire to move away from “plain-old telephone service,” otherwise known as POTS, in favor of investing resources in broadband infrastructure.

From the filing:

“While broadband usage – and the importance of broadband to Americans’ lives – is growing every day, the business model for legacy phone services is in a death spiral. Revenues from POTS are plummeting as customers cut their landlines in favor of the convenience and advanced features of wireless and VoIP services. At the same time, due to the high fixed costs of providing POTS, every customer who abandons this service raises the average cost-per-line to serve the remaining customers. With an outdated product, falling revenues, and rising costs, the POTS business is unsustainable for the long run.   …Due to technological advances, changes in consumer preference, and market forces, the question is when, not if, POTS service and the PSTN [Public Switched Telephone Network] over which it is provided will become obsolete.”

Essentially, AT&T seeks for the FCC to “eliminate the regulatory requirements that prolong the life of POTS and the PSTN,” freeing up resources for broadband infrastructure.

All this sounds like some common-sense thinking. I know that our household will be moving away from land line use in 2010.

And in related (tongue-in-cheek) news, AT&T is also moving away from Tiger Woods.

Thanks to readers like you, this has been a big year for WORLDmag.com, with our most traffic ever. So what were the articles that drew millions of readers to our site? Here’s a list that ranks the 20 magazine and Web Extra articles read the most by visitors to WORLDmag.com in 2009.

Ever heard of the show Wife Swap? My husband and I participated in a “role swap” this week, and while it wasn’t exactly intentional, it was good.

For the past year-and-a-half, in addition to his full-time teaching job and part-time seminary studies, Craig has worked part-time at Covenant Seminary’s bookstore. At the end of every December, the store closes down for a couple of days while owner Nick Gleason and his three part-timers account for every item in the store.

Thanks to Nick’s flexibility, I’ve occasionally covered Craig’s shift when his school schedule has been too tight. This week, as it’s the last of his school vacation, I asked Craig if I could help him out by taking his two full-day inventory shifts at the store while he stayed home with our kids. He was happy to make this arrangement work; thus, I’ve been a “working woman” for the past two days, while he’s been a “stay-at-home dad.”

At the end of the shifts, I came home exhausted, ready to be alone somewhere; he was ready for conversation about the day. I semi-expected the house to be in perfect shape (after all, what did he do all day while I was gone?); he expected me to contribute to the overall well-being of our family existence once I got home.

After making dinner (trust me: neither of us wants Craig to cook), I was checking my email on the computer when he came over, pulled up a stool next to my desk, and suggested we “spend the next few minutes justifying each other’s existence.” It seemed in our two-day “role swap,” we both gained some insight into what the other one does.

Despite—or perhaps because of—my exhaustion, I could better sympathize with Craig’s work at an extroverted job (teaching) from 7:30 to 3:30 every day, followed immediately by either a seminary class or a two-hour shift at the bookstore. When he finally makes it home to our often-disheveled house—complete with dishes piled in the sink, laundry in stacks all over the bedroom, and no place to lie down and rest—not to mention my hope and expectation that he will lend a hand with the girls, it’s a wonder he doesn’t turn right around and go sit in the car for another hour.

I can tell you this: The last thing I wanted to do today when I got home from the bookstore was fold laundry or make dinner; rather, I wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for three hours. Somehow, though, he chooses to overcome that tendency most days, and I gained a new appreciation for him today as a result.

Based on what he said to me, he, too, could better sympathize with what I do everyday: juggling four girls, 400 pounds of laundry (including coats), bathroom cleaning, bedroom cleaning, and the whole play-in-the-snow/come-back-in-multiple-times/have-hot-chocolate/spill-hot-chocolate/clean-up-hot-chocolate scenario while I was gone. Craig said he didn’t have any problem getting all the work done and making sure the girls didn’t kill or maim each other, but he did wonder how in the world he would have fit in six hours of homeschool teaching and learning had he needed to do so. He said he gained a new appreciation for me and for what it takes to do more than just play referee.

I don’t think every married couple needs to experience a “role swap” to fully appreciate what the other does, but perhaps if we each gave a little more thought to what our spouses do on our behalf, we might live with them in a more understanding way. And, if we really want to get crazy, actually communicating our appreciation for the other’s role fulfillment might just be a great way to start 2010.

WORLD’s latest issue, which looks at the year ahead, is now available online.

Here are some highlights:

COVER STORY | The Year Ahead: The great wizard says he and his congressional associates can control the thermometer, the odometer and the sphygmomanometer. How will Americans react—politically, economically, and culturally—to such arrogance?

TERRORISM | Tomorrow’s war: Yemen becomes new ground zero on terror following Northwest bombing attempt. WORLD’s Jamie Dean reports.

MOVIES | Fighting man: WORLD’s Megan Basham says actors and action—but not a frivolous plot—highlight Sherlock Holmes.

MARVIN OLASKY | After the swoon: Will 2010 bring realism or more political romance?

Rush Limbaugh is reported to be resting comfortably in a Honolulu hospital after suffering chest pains while on vacation.

His website has the following notice posted:

Rush appreciates your prayers and well wishes. He will keep you updated via RushLimbaugh.com and on Thursday’s radio program.

As we put 2009 to bed, my thoughts turn to congressman Joe Wilson from South Carolina, who on Sept. 9 cried out “You lie!” in the middle of a packed Congress—rather than at his television set or in his car like other people did.

It reminds me of how my husband got himself kicked out of seminary in 1976, when, in a large assembly, he stood up and respectfully corrected the president of the school for a misleading statement about Korea that my Korean-born future husband would be in a position to know the facts about. Later that day, when Young returned to his dorm room, he found his name taken off the door.

Which in turn reminds me of my friend Bob, who in 1975, as he was the person in charge of putting verses on the outdoor church sign every week, posted Romans 2:24: “For as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” His was a sleepy and affluent Cape Cod town, where everyone was a Christian and all the children were above average. The pastor peremptorily declined that bit of Pauline exhortation, and my friend lost standing.

Which in turn reminds me of the time Paul the apostle was constrained to rebuke Peter for a bit of hypocrisy. And as a matter of fact he did in front of everybody (Galatians 2:14).

It’s hard, isn’t it, to know when to speak out and when to hold one’s peace; when to confront publicly and when to confront privately; when boldness is godliness, and when it is “inappropriateness”? There are many times I wish I has spoken a truth and not erred on the side of appropriateness (or cowardice). The more water that goes under the bridge, the more I wish I had feared God rather than man.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

Good morning.

On this day in 1972: Baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash while attempting to take relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

Welcome to our daily (except Sundays) open thread, where you, the commenters, choose the topics of conversation.

Sorrowful news comes out of Kabul, Afghanistan this afternoon as a suicide bomber has claimed the lives of eight Americans:

A suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at a military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing eight Americans, U.S. officials said. The explosion occurred at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province near the Afghan border with Pakistan. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed that eight Americans died in the attack. “We mourn the loss of life in this attack, and are withholding further details pending notification of next of kin,” he said.

Our prayers go out to the families who will be receiving news of the death of their loved one.

Tax payers were taken to the cleaners through the misguided “Cash for Clunkers” auto rebate, otherwise known as the “I Hate the Poor” program.

Speaking of cleaners, now Uncle Sam is rolling out a sequel to the program, this time involving home appliances:

Modeled after the popular Cash for Clunkers program, which was intended to get cars with low gas mileage off the road, a federal appliance rebate program is launching in early 2010. It offers a boost to people buying energy-efficient clothes washers, refrigerators and other appliances – those that qualify for the federal “Energy Star” designation – and to manufacturers, whose sales fell 10 percent in 2008 and another 12 percent through mid-December this year.

The program has only $300 million, one-tenth as much money as Cash for Clunkers, or about $1 per U.S resident, so it could run out fast. States are receiving roughly the same amount per capita, with California getting the most at $35.2 million, but what’s eligible varies by state.

By all means, let’s tack on another $300 million to the national debt to give people rebates on appliances they were probably going to purchase anyway.

Sounds like money laundering to me.