The Bible
Cheerily greeting people with ‘Happy New Year’ weeks after the year began would be weird – kind of like wishing someone happy birthday when it wasn’t.
Murray Smith
Writing this, I’m hoping your year has indeed begun with the ‘happiness,’ people wished upon you. Sadly for some, their year will already have been marred by loss, difficulty and pain. If that’s your circumstance or it’s someone else’s close to you, I am truly sorry.
What was meant weeks back when ”Happy New Year” slid easily off our tongue? Since happiness is contingent on ‘favourable happenings’, probably what we were envisaging was extending the hope for an incoming year full of positive things. Perhaps the hope of ‘cutting a new groove’ in some way… of doing things better and accomplishing things that hitherto have eluded us. Or, of achieving specific goals and finding abundance in places where we’ve experienced deficit – a new year presenting a ‘line in the sand’ with opportunity to cast a vision for fresh beginnings.
An optimist was head over heels in love with a pessimist. He wistfully proposed to her. “We should get married next year!” Brusquely, she deflected, “What! Whoever would want us!?” Broadly speaking, personality-wise, we all figure somewhere in between those two extremes. And life being what it is, we’ll all experience disappointing, unfavourable ‘happenings’ that won’t lead to happiness. Designed to be deeply ‘anchored’ in joy, our hearts crave its refreshing.
This can still be a ‘new’ year for you and true joy is attainable. Embracing changes necessary to avoid reverting to our ‘same old’ mode will make the difference.
People attempting new year’s resolutions with best intentions, often find they’re quickly ‘bent’ out of shape and soon broken. That causes despair and a sense of failure. How is it we purpose to improve ourselves, yet revert to old patterns and behaviours so readily? I think the word ‘recidivism’ as defined by Websters Dictionary expresses it clearly – ‘The tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behaviour.’
Being a ‘recidivist’ often describes someone criminally inclined. But it’s within all of us potentially, to battle an ‘Achilles heel’ that’s just below the surface. ’Reforming’ ourselves and bringing about our own inner transformational change, is impossible. We need help.
Ironically, because we’re locked into stubborn self-effort, that independence entrenches our core inability to ever thoroughly and genuinely change. We’re taught it’s our efforts and performance that validates us, earning us merit and that ‘doing’ supplants simply ‘being’.
Men seem especially susceptible to this. I’ve noticed in settings where guys get to know one another, they ask first and foremost, “So, what do you do?” Like inquisitive dogs sniffing each other over, our worth is assessed by our accomplishment.
The bondage of all ‘religious’ activity is that it’s about humanistic ‘doing’… futile, striving self-effort that will never be enough. Here’s what sets authentic Christian faith, poles apart from ‘religion’- having authentic, personal relationship with God exists purely in trusting what Christ has already done for us. There’s a beauty of rest that comes from abiding in Him. Jesus offers more than a happy new year – let Him love you into a new joy-filled, empowered way of life.
