How is your New Year’s resolution list coming? Are you using that new exercise machine that guarantees you’ll drop 4-5 inches from your waistline, or is it now the new coat rack? How about the latest fad diet…the new running shoes…the latest self help book? I know, it’s mid January and the list is probably now crumpled in a desk drawer somewhere. Overshadowed by the immediate situations of our world, we tend to be drawn back to the very things we resolved to change. Human beings, by our very sin nature, are prone to relying on a list of things we should or shouldn’t be doing in an effort to make us better. We write New Year’s resolutions that we believe show good common sense and then we ask God to bless them. If we do things from a sense of duty only, we are putting up a standard in competition with Jesus Christ. We have put our resolutions on the throne instead of the resurrected Christ.
In the Epistle appointed for Epiphany 3, the Apostle Paul writes: “Be not wise in your own conceits.” (Rom 12:16)
Rather than relying on old conceits to get us through another year we need to get into the habit of constantly referring back to the resurrected Lord of all. We are called not to walk in the light of our own self-centered desires, but to walk in the light of the Risen Lord! What would God have you resolve to improve or change for the New Year? What would He bless? Act according to His will and those resolutions just may be a lot more doable.
Don’t worry, spring will be here soon and you can always sell that exercise machine at your garage sale.
Be In His Will,
Bishop Ian
