New Year’s Resolution and Renewal

“The desert will be glad and the wilderness will rejoiceand blossom”Isaiah 35:1
 
The prophets in the Bible are well known for their doom and gloom when looking into the future. But, they do have a softer side. The promise of renewal is another hallmark of the biblical prophets. Isaiah is probably the most beautifully poetic of all the prophets. Isaiah sees a future where the symbolic ‘desert’ of our lives blossoms and blooms in new ways. This same promise of renewal is at the heart of Jesus’ death and resurrection and the ‘good news’ of the Gospel.
Our own new year brings an echo of God’s prophetic promise, as we think of things starting fresh and chuckle over others promises of ‘new year’s resolutions.’ Have you made a New Year’s resolution this year? Each year I hear many people promise to eat better or exercise or take up a new hobby. And then of course, this is followed by people teasing over the likelihood such a resolution will be kept —“yeah, how long will that one last?” Or, “how long did last year’s last — 5 days?”
It seems many times our new efforts to better ourselves or renew ourselves fall apart quickly. It is hard to stay focused on a change, especially if it takes a lot of will power. Change is hard. If the resolution is even bigger, like trying to make the world better in some way, it seems even more difficult to do.
Perhaps we spend too much effort in trying to make change in the way we believe change should happen, instead of opening our eyes to the change that God is bringing all around us.
I think God is constantly in the renewing business, but often times it gets misinterpreted as things being out of control. It seems we live amidst the winds of change in our lives. Perhaps what is required is not to set a goal and strain with the effort of change, but rather to let go of our worn patterns of the past and release the things that keep our renewal at bay.
The old cliché is ‘to let go and let God.’ Perhaps there is still some true wisdom left in this old phrase. To let go of the regular, the normal, the safe, the expected, is to see God with new eyes. We see change in our world in the news everyday and that can often bring fear. Can we look at change as it comes into our world each day from the perspective of knowing we have a God who has not stopped creating with the stuff of our world and our lives.
In this new year, let us trust ourselves and our future to the God who brings the renewing waters of life into the dry desert places of our lives. Now that is a resolution.