Happy New Year! New year, new start, new me... The year has just changed, which means we’re all now new people, much more capable of doing good things than we were last week. Or something.
The trouble is, as we discover every year, resolutions are like rules: made to be broken.
It’s not that setting ourselves goals of healthier lifestyles, tidier houses, better friendships, more organised work lives, or whatever it might be, is not a good thing to be doing. It’s just that we are human, and we make mistakes. By creating a list of ideals at the start of each new calendar year, we seem to be setting ourselves up to fail. With all the sincerity and effort in the world, we’re not going to be perfect people in 2014.
If we could fix ourselves by trying harder, there’d be no need for God to send Jesus to rescue us. (We celebrated that just last week, remember?)
But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to ignore our shortcomings and simply live our lives ever more selfishly. Instead, this year, I’m humbly advocating identifying “themes” to work on – areas of life where there is room for meaningful improvement that we can talk to God about, and work out together how to glorify him in them.
It being a new year becomes irrelevant – it’s never a bad time to work on being holy. What is more, whenever we fall down, we can rely on God’s grace to help us back up.
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