New Year Day, 2008
Why do so many people feel obligated to make New Year’s resolutions every year in which they promise to do something that will improve their lives? Loosing weight, quitting smoking and quitting drinking are probably the three most common. Self-control,[1] patience and conflict resolution skills [2] are some of the highly underrated character issues that people really need to be improving. I could go and dig up some statistic done by various research groups that will tell you the precise percentage of people that fail to fulfill such resolution, but I don’t need to. You know for yourself how many times you have failed to keep your own resolutions in the past. You know how many times you and your friends have told each other your resolutions and then failed to keep them. The newscasts during the final week of every year are filled special reports that will tell you how to maintain your resolution. News reporters joke with each other about how they have the same resolution this year as they have had for the past several. They tell you that they always seem to blow their resolutions in less then a week.
Then there is Lent, which was originally a solemn preparation of the hearts of Christians through prayer and fasting of prior to the celebration of Easter. To the modern secular world, it is just another time that are suppose to give up something, but only for 40 days. Many modern secularized Christians pledge to spend the 40 days of Lent acting like the Christians that they are suppose to be year around. My Muslim friends may object to me saying that Ramadan incorporates both aspect of Lent, but I have worked too closely with their community to not be able to see what is blatantly obvious. Lent has been used to justify the invention of the pre-Lent festival know as “Fat Tuesday” which is nothing more then a sin-fest. I find it highly unlikely that anybody who observes “Fat Tuesday” also observes Lent.
The reason why New Year’s resolutions, Lent and other “change your life” days are such vain endeavors is that real change only comes if you really want it. If you really want to change then you won’t wait until the New Year, Lent, etc to do so. Instead, you would immediately start making the changes that you need to make the instant that you realize that they are necessary. Everybody that I have heard give a testimony of how they succeeded in overcoming addictions and other character flaws bares this statement out.
So why celebrate the New Year and Lent? The New Year is a good time to reexamine your life’s goals and then look back over the previous year to see how far you have come to achieving them. This pertains to you education, career, family, etc. Look to see if you are still own track or if you have gotten side tracked somewhere along the way. You then take look to see what adjustments that you may need to make in how you commit your time and finances in order to reach those goals.
Lent is a good time to focus exclusively your spiritual walk especially in the area of your ministry gifts. Do you know what they are? Are you using them? What have you done to develop them so that you can use them more effectively? This spiritual self-examination can also be part of your New Year self-exam. Never-the-less, our spiritual walk is so important that we should take time out to focus on them exclusively. Christmas is so full of family orientated festivities that such solemn activities are difficult to focus on.
It is my hope that what I have written is an encouragement to you. You can make changes if you are trying to make them because you have come to the realization that you must rather then because the calendar says that you should.
[1] Which includes controlling one’s temper
