2026: The year of Consistency

Recently, I’ve had to tell my daughter to not be afraid. Sometimes her fears are justified: Ambulance sirens, a loud motorcycle racing past, or me getting carried away with my ‘monster voice’. Other times, I find it difficult to see why she may be scared in the first place (curtains, biltong, or really anything that hangs really). It got me thinking about all the things I’ve been worrying about recently… The future of our country, my next pay raise, and how 2026 is going to turn out.

In my quiet time at the end of 2025, the word that was put on my heart was “Consistency”. I’ve never really struggled with setting big goals but I’ve struggled consistently with staying consistent. When I looked back on 2025, I couldn’t name even 3 things that I stayed consistent in throughout the year. There were weeks where I trained almost 15 hours and there were weeks where I didn’t even get in 3000 steps per day. There were weeks where I spent time with the Lord every day and there were weeks where He took a backseat in my seemingly ‘busy’ life.

Without getting too deep into it there is one goal in particular that I am wanting to stay consistent in: Reading the Bible. My goal is to read one distinct story per week. That’s it. Not the entire Bible in a year. Not even a chapter a day. Just a weekly story out of the Bible. At the end of the year that would mean 52 stories… Could you imagine the impact?

Being Brave

Share anything publicly and you risk looking like a spanner when you inevitably mess up. This blog is exactly that: A place to fail publicly. I can think of a lot of excuses in this moment not to do it, but I can also think of one very good reason to do it: It’s a chance to measure myself against the thing that God put in my heart at the beginning of this year.

I miss writing and I can’t remember the last time I’ve written more than 200 words without using Claude, ChatGPT, or another AI model to help me. Writing has always brought clarity to my mind and to my prayer life. Writing a prayer down makes it feel more concrete and easier to reflect on.

The first story I am reading in this (short) week is about a man named Benaiah (pronounced “Ben-aay-yah”). I’ve never heard of him before this week (I was intentional to create a reading plan of lesser known stories out of the Bible) and it’s kind of crazy that he is on the list of lesser known stories because he was one brave man.

A Warrior for David

Here is what the Bible has to say about Benaiah:

And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel, a doer of great deeds. He struck down two ariels of Moab. He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen. 2 Samuel 23:20

It’s clear that he was a brave man. David’s military was divided into three primary elements. The army (commanded by Joab), the militia (a reserve force), and the royal bodyguard. Benaiah at various points of his career would hold command in all three. He also killed a lion in a pit if you maybe forgot…

His story is not a long one, this week was also not a long one, so I’ll keep this short. The thing that I’m thinking of this week is this:

Is fearing a lion as irrational as fearing a curtain when God is on your side?

The Bible tells us to not be afraid a lot of times. This includes lions, curtains, the future of your country, the new year, everything big and small. Do not be afraid.

Parenting holds a mirror up to yourself because when I tell my daughter not to be afraid, I always give a reason. “Jesus is in your heart”. It’s the simple answer that is so difficult to consider as the truth in a world where everything in the world is seemingly out there to distract and destroy anything good.

“Do not be afraid of failing often this year.” - this is what I feel for myself in 2026. I’m sure this post is all over the place and not well-written. But I’m hopeful that next week will be better. I’m pressing publish on this one and sharing it to my WhatsApp status, because I’ve learned from Benaiah that I should not be afraid.