New Year’s resolutions. Did you make any?
I didn’t. You know why?
Because when December 31st became January 1st, when 2009 became 2010, when the count hit zero and the ball dropped, guess what happened to the sun?
Nothing. It still rose January 1st, the same way it did December 31st.
You see, the newness of 2010 is actually an illusion. The fact that it is a new decade really holds no significant portents for changes in life. We are not especially empowered to become different because we write “10”s in our dates instead of “09”s, we’re not magically revived to become stronger.
The significance of the change of the numbers has been ingrained in us by a culture that wants to believe that the way that we have parceled off our time (heh, our time, as if somehow we owned the age) is actually cosmically significant in changing us, when in reality we are the exact same rotten people we were a week ago, and a week from now we will continue to make the same mistakes, save for a few here and there.
“How is it that you are turning back to the same weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved to them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years!” Thus the apostle Paul indicted the Galatian church because they continued to buy the notion that their “special days” would make that much of a difference in their walk with God.
Your strength to see change in your life, to move forward, to do what is right is not contained in the year 2010. It is not contained in a certain day of the week, month, or year. Your strength to do what is right is precisely this freedom: 2010 has no hold on you. It has no claim on you. It cannot wave anything in your face and blackmail you into relying upon it.
Soon, 2010 will be the old year. Its lustre will fade, its appeal will vanish, 2010 will be so last year, or, even worse, 2000 and late. I don’t plan on letting its newness entice me. Rather, I’ll be holding on to the good, the permanent, the things that will continue to provide strength long after the emotions of “it’s a new year” fade away. I’ll be clinging to that which will be the same in 2011, 2012, 2021, 2100.
Friends, if you’re going to rely on anything to live rightly, choose rightly what you rely on to live.
PS. My LoveBeta-ites… hahaha I know we were supposed to make new year’s resolutions and I put in the packet to make them. I guess if you made them, be faithful to them… just do so by God’s strength.