New Year's Resolutions

It is that time again. It is the last day of 2008 and now is the time to make the New Year Resolutions. I have a number of friends who tell me that they don't make any because they never keep them. What is the use? I prefer to make them because I think they do at least two things.

One, they are a confession that I am not perfect now. To make a resolution to do someting next year that you are not doing this year or to quit doing next year something that you are doing this year is to confess that your life is not all that you want it to be. You are not perfect as you are. The resistance to make New Year Resolutions maybe that some people do not want to have to admit that there is anything about them that needs to be changed. "God loves and accepts me as I am, why should I change?" To make a resolution is confess the need to be different to change.

Two, they are the affirmation that I still believe that change is possible. Perhaps that is the harder affirmation. It is a affirmation that santification is possible. Conversions do take place. A resolution not only admits that I need to be different, but that I can become different. It fights the forces of inertia which say "You can't change the spots on a leopard. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Those people will always be that way. Trailer park bred trailer park dead." The resolution is rooted in the faith that redemption is possible. I am a sinner, but by the grace of God and by that grace working in me, I can become something better and different.

I have made lots of resolutions and my friends are correct. There are lots of them that I have not been able to keep fully, but I suspect that I am a better person now than I was years ago from the trying and from the things I did do to honor them.

A New Year's Resolution is the fulfillment of the old line, "By God, I am not what I ought to be; I am not what I am going to be, but thank God, I am not what I used to be." Happy New Year.