Made your New Year’s revolution yet? Resolution, did I say? No, resolutions are as cheap as a used toothpick and generally just as useful. It’s not another resolution we need; it’s a revolution!
Speaking of revolutions, God designed our existence as though we’re living in the cogs of a huge clock. Earth spins on its axis, exposing our part of the planet to half sunlight and half dark. This gives me at least two opportunities a day to adjust my attitude — at rise-and-shine and beddy-bye time. “It is good to give thanks to the Lord,…to declare Your loving kindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness every night.” (Ps 92:1-2) Now there’s a New Year’s revolution worth experiencing!
Ever wonder why our resolutions are generally as limp as old celery? One reason is that every decision we make is actually two decisions. If we’ve decided to do something more — exercise, Bible reading, visiting shut-ins, or whatever — we also have to decide what we’re going to do less. Nobody can make time; you have to take time from something else.
I have a tie rack with 24 hooks. Every time I tried to extricate a tie, I felt trapped in a nightmare with an overzealous octopus. No more. Twenty-four hooks = 24 ties. I now decide when I unwrap that magenta palm tree special to either consign it to the thrift shop or replace an old faithful.
So it is with my 24 hours. There’s always enough time to do God’s will. We’re crushed because we don’t allow our days to be “ordered by the Lord” (37:23). He runs the universe well. Do we think we’ll run our lives better than He can?
There are many other opportunities for revolution this year. The moon’s rotations give us a monthly reboot. The changes of the seasons let us spring clean our thoughts and wasted time as well as our closets. Holidays allow for re-creation, not just relaxation.
But the revolution of epic proportions is the one we take around the sun each year. You’d think 92,955,807 miles would give us enough time to make some serious improvements. Why so hard?
Ah, the biggest fight in town. All the focus on fights in politics, in causes célèbres, or in families and marriages usually misses the point. Take your index finger. Point it at the nearest rib cage. It all starts there.
James, in his antiseptic style, writes, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (4:1, NIV)
The apostle Paul cuts even deeper: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … What I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.” (Rom 7:15, 18-19, NIV)
His conclusion? It’s not pretty — but it is potent: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God —through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vv 24-25)
So there you have it — the biggest fight in town. And the only way to win, to have a real New Year’s Revolution, is to invite Jesus to take the wheel on this next spin around the sun.
Religion Page article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch on Sunday, Jan 16, 2022.