New Year's Resolutions

Written around the end of December 2011. But only found today...

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I'm quite a grump about New Year's resolutions. I'm realistic about myself, knowing that I am a fey and fickle creature, lazy to the bone, and can barely stop drinking coffee for a week, let alone keep a noble resolution for 365 days.

So I make some silly ones that are easy to keep, and over which I shan't pour scalding regret, if I did break them.

But this New Year's Eve, as I look back over my 20s and look forward to turning 30, seems a good junction to reflect, and ask myself some bigger questions about who I am, and who I would like to become.

I've never been much of a New Year's celebrator (I expend all my anticipation and excitement over Christmas), and I'm rather immune to the shiny excitment of a fresh new year (blank pages, unknown plans etc.) But Chesterton reminds me:

"THE object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

-'Daily News.'

And so it seemed providential that this week's sermon at church mentioned Wesley's Covenant. Another local church had this in their weekly bulletin:

"John Wesley adapted a Covenant Prayer for use in services for the Renewal of the believer's Covenant with God. In his Short history of the people called Methodists (1781), Wesley describes the first covenant service; a similar account is to be found in his Journal of the time. Wesley says that the first service was held on Monday 11 August 1755, at the French church at Spitalfields in London, with 1800 people present. The prayer had some of its origins in the puritan, Richard Alleine. Services using the Covenant prayer have been included in most Methodist books of liturgy since. It has become usual to use this at New Year. We will offer the opportunity to pray this prayer today:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

(Book of Offices of the British Methodist Church, 1936)."

Perhaps, instead of resolutions, which look to the will and strength of the man or woman to accomplish, we could pray this instead. Every day, for 365 days. And trust that God will work this in us, hourly, daily, for this year, and beyond.