Pulpit & P
ew
A spiritual new year
I lived in Oklahoma City for many years and belonged to a fitness center. I saw many of the same people each day.
Their schedule for fitness and mine coincided; however, for the first six weeks of each year, the place was crowded with unfamiliar faces. These were the “New Year’s Resolutions” folks. Most were gone by the middle of February.
There is wisdom in the 12 Step community that applies beyond the context of addiction.
The first step acknowledges powerlessness over the area that needs to change. The second step declares there is a higher power that can help us.
The third step is the decision to turn our lives over to the higher power. The fourth step is making a moral inventory to determine what we need to change.
The 12 Step focus is on one day at a time. Neither the failures of a single day nor the prospect of difficulties in the future should discourage us.
New Year’s resolutions usually arise from a process similar to the fourth step inventory. The lack of success in achieving resolutions may result from misplaced self-confidence. There is no admission that we can’t get there alone, nor is there reliance upon a higher power for achievement.
One of my favorite scriptures is from 2 Corinthians 5:17: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.”(NRSV) Verse 16 says we no longer think of people from a “human point of view.”
These verses give us permission to avoid thinking of others or ourselves as failures. We can think simply in terms of potential and possibilities. God is also urging us to forget the failures of the past and inviting believers to understand themselves as new creations.
At Christmas, we focus on Christ as a baby. One of the things that is special about newborns is they haven’t messed up anything yet. In a sense, they are nothing but potential and possibilities.
What God, through the Apostle Paul, in the above verses, offers us is the opportunity to focus only on the moment and the realistic possibility for things to be different and better. What a gift!
The gift can become reality if we acknowledge the limitations of our human condition and the power available to us from the Holy Spirit. We are invited to turn our will, our goals and dreams to him.
—Rev. Dr. Stan Basler Galesburg United Methodist Church
