New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions

I have come to the age-seasoned conclusion that my New Year’s resolutions rarely surpass a good beginning, no matter how good my intentions might be.

I wonder why we have such eagerness to reach for new goals on the first day of a new year. Perhaps it is because we are born with instinctive motivation triggered by the ‘unsullied page’. I can, without effort, reach back and reclaim the feeling I always had on the first day of a new school year when I clutched in my hand a new , clean notebook. How very carefully and neatly I penned the first page and how deep was my resolve to carry that same diligence to the last page . It never happened !!

Perhaps the problem is not with our commendable desire for perfection but with the length of our grasp.
God never asks more of us than what we are able to achieve and I read nowhere in scripture where God asks us to reach for a year at a time. The ‘time grasp’ He has put into our hands is one day. “Give us this DAY”, “Sufficient unto the DAY” , etc. So perhaps the key to our success is to live one day at a time… Not a new idea to any of us… but a key that we seem so easily to misplace. Worries, concerns, trouble, demands , disappointments, discontent are always in abundance waiting to snatch the key to success from our hearts.

If we make everyday “the first day of the rest of our lives”, will it change how we do life?
I love Jeremiah’s words in his Lamentations 3:22-24. Here we are told God’s mercy and compassions are “new EVERY morning”. These joyful words of encouragement promise us a ‘new unsullied notebook’ every single morning - not just on the first day of the new year. These words are even more encouraging when we realize that Jeremiah penned these words not after the best days of his life but after his worst… the strength in this promise of God was what kept him secure in the deepest anguish of his life.

So -- my New Year’s resolution this year is to live 2007 ONE day at a time with the assurance that each morning greets me with the promise of God’s mercy and faithfulness to cover every moment of the day and it is in His strength and love that I give my best effort to joyfully live each day in the center of His will.