Now that the New Year is offically underway, let me be among those to wish you a prayerful promise of a great 2007.
The St. Petersburg TIMES ran an oldie but goodie PEANUTS in the comic section on New Year's Day. It opens with with Snoopy lying in thoughtful repose on the snow covered ground lamenting, "So here I am starting a New Year...But am I any different? Nope! I'm the same ol' dog! Day after day and year after year...never a change." The final panel has Snoopy in one of his familiar poses, lying on his back on top of his snow covered dog house and thinking smugly, "Sometimes I marvel at my consistency!" I can relate. You?
Tis the season, so I'm told when personal resolutions are made. They run the gamut from A to Z, all faithfully formulated to make us a better person in some respect than we were the previous year. Some are introspective...we recognize for ourselves an area or areas in our lives that requires adjustment...either doing some things more or doing some things less. Other resolutions are more or less thrust upon us by people who declare steadfastly that they "only have our best interest at heart." My dear wife has thrust one of those types of resolutions on me...to go to the gym at least once per week. I am bound by the love for my wife and the threat of her wrath to embrace that particular resolution. Unlike the old adage that says "getting there is half the fun," I fear that sentiment doesn't hold much validity when it will be painfully applied to my aging body. I'd rather be like Snoopy and marvel at my heretofore well developed sense of consistency.
So...have you made any resolutions for yourself this year? Some wise person made the observation that "Confession is good for the soul, but is really bad for the reputation!" I'm not asking you to reveal them to me. Your determination to make and keep a resolution is strictly your decision. That choice, like life itself, is so much a paradox. Consider the fact of how blessed we are to live in this wonderful country. Compared with any standard of living, we are the most affluent society in world...where our material welfare is virtually guaranteed, where our enemies are diligently held at bay, and the greatest majority of infectious diseases that threaten life are contained. One would surmise that we would be at our leisure to figure out ways of living and relating to each other that would produce a sustained sense of fulfillment, happiness and contentment. Then why is it that mental health professionals of all stripes continue to maintain burgeoning case loads? There in lies the paradox. What is it about the human condition that seems for too many to devise formidable roadblocks between themselves and the life they so desperately desire?
Every spring the sock-eyed salmon swim back up the rivers and streams of Alaska to reach their place of origin. The trip is arduous in and of itself, but add in the combined hazard of there being a gaggle of very hungry brown bears waiting atop the rapids to devour the unlucky few that leap into their waiting jaws and one comes to realize that not every enterprise will have a good outcome. Some salmon make it...some don't. Some bears eat their fill...some go hungry. It's a paradox of consequence. Seems to me that one of the best strategies for living is to understand that we are limited in what each have control of in our lives and to forgo the illusion and accompanying anguish that we can and must control everything.
Here's my personal resolution... To be thankful to God each and every day that He has granted me yet one more day to embrace all that day has in store for me...the good and the bad...knowing that HE and He alone is "perfectly" in control of everything and my task is to Honor Him and my Savior Jesus Christ by living each moment with a peaceful knowledge that He does not expect me to be "in control of all things." Now if I could just get God to take away all the anticipated pain that will accompany my efforts to get back in shape, we'd be square.
Have a great first week of 2007! Enjoy each day granted you and make that day a quest for excellence.
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