Resolutions? Really?

This is the time of year when our culture spends some time looking back at the previous year, making top ten lists of stories, remembering prominent figures who died, and collectively letting out a relieved sigh that it’s all over.  At the same time, pundits of all stripe develop their lists of what the new year will bring--prognostications not uncommonly at odds with each other.  In many cases, telling us we may have sighed too soon.

What do individuals do besides read and listen to all this stuff?  We make resolutions, promises to ourselves and perhaps others, about what we’ll do differently this year.  Often on the list of goals are things such as, losing weight, exercising more--God knows those are often on my list--stopping smoking, drinking less, cutting expenses, ridding ourselves of stressors, and on and on.  In fact, most of these are among the top ten annual resolution according to those who study such things. These are laudable goals.  Laudable as they may be, however, our cultural norm is to quickly break them; or to put it another way, to fail to achieve the goals we thought were important enough to adopt them in the first place.

So far, this sounds like the musings of a sociologist or perhaps and anthropologist.  What about a theological perspective? Here goes.  

Tradition alone may not be what calls us to make resolutions at the new year.  As Christians, each of us likely is aware that we have not yet become all we’ve been called to be.  To use a seldom used word, we know we are not yet sanctified, that is, we have not yet attained that level of holiness of living that is desirable in Christ.  As we often pray, “...we have sinned by what we have done and what we have left undone.”  Perhaps this desire to attain this Spirit-directed life is what pushes us to make resolutions.  But, because we are not yet, we have a tendency to deal with superficial changes.  Since they don’t address the deep desire, we often lack the determination to make them a new reality for our lives. Consequently, we break our resolutions.

If all this has any truth to it, then at the threshold of a new year, we might rethink our resolutions.  Yes, many of us could stand to lose a few pounds, but we could also stand to take more time to listen to God’s murmurings in our hearts.  If we are constantly busy, when can we listen?  We have filled our days with a barrage of incoming and outgoing messages when what we probably need much more is silence--silence that allows us to attend to God’s whispers.

Sure, almost all of us could stand to exercise more faithfully, but almost all of us could also benefit from delving deeper into our faith and its implications for our lives.  With most us relying only on hearing a few minutes of the Bible read to us on Sunday, we could probably benefit from a deeper study of the context and meaning of those readings, far more than a sermon can offer.  What we used to called Sunday School, we now call Christian Formation, on the assumption that the offerings help form us into more faithful and effective Christians.  Not that you can’t be formed by reading and studying on your own--you can.  But how likely are you to do that?  Is this the year to learn more?

Before this turns into a sermon, let me just suggest that you have the idea by now.  If you take a few minutes to reflect on these musings and may also find you want to reflect on what meaningful promises to yourself you can make for 2012.  I hope so.

Peace,  Jerry