I want my life to make more sense,
I want my life to make amends,
I want my life to make more sense to me.
- The Frames
I'm not a New Year's "resolver." I have never made a resolution to do something after the new year, similar to how I have only a very few times "given up" anything for Lent. It's not that I have anything against the original concept of these traditions; it's just that their everyday forms generally fail to inspire me. For instance, how much does giving up chocolate desserts for forty days really inspire me to think about my life or Christ's sufferings? Not that much, really.
It's not that I can't imagine a possible scenario where giving up something small for Lent could help me focus or practice self-discipline, or how a New Year's Resolution could inspire me to new depths of self-actualization and happiness... it just also seems a little unlikely.
What would it look like if our resolutions had a revolution (literally turned around) to become something that was a little less about ourselves and reached out to encompass a community, a family, a world?
Sure, let's still go to the gym, but also let's think about the mark we leave on the lives of others, how our acts create waves that we can't even see. Let's think about how we're making sense of our lives, how we are making amends, how we rightly choose to stay and fight or choose to find a fresh road forward...
Pavement Tune by The Frames (lyrics HERE)
Turns out, this ties right back into Christmas. In the usual December flurry of "Does the 'Christ' Still Matter in Christmas?" articles, my favorite was one in the Huffington Post that reminded us that 'the greatest attack on Christmas has come from within,' from Christians whose actions so little resembled the teachings of Christ.
It is galvanizing to remember that perhaps my resolutions might take a different form because of Christmas: one of honoring the baby born in Bethlehem and the man he grew to be by starting anew the revolution in my own life - the turning again towards the difficult task of trying to live with more grace and less judgement, with more understanding and less ignorance, with more compassion and and less need for control.
Making all things new is ultimately a process of grace through God's help, but it is also a process of time and desire -- and practice. We must want our actions to be transformed or we make God's work infinitely harder. So it begs the question: how are our resolutions at the new year, at the mid-year, and elsewhere opening us daily to this transformation both personally and communally?
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
- 2 Cor 3: 18
May the work of the Spirit continue to be seen through even our small acts of courage, grace and peace in this coming year.
- Anna
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