NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTIONS
“Sometimes his words stir to life long forgotten resolutions, call to mind an earlier time when our feet were set in a good path and our plan was for holy endeavor. Like a great wind they move, fanning into flame the burning spirit of the living God, and our leaden spirits are given wings that sweep beyond all vistas and all horizons.” Howard Thurman
“Behold, I make all things new.” Revelation 21:5
I plan to get lit on New Year’s Eve! In fact, I plan to stay lit throughout 2012. I am not referring to an overindulgence of Veuve Clicquot, although I do intend to raise a few toasts to ring in the New Year. What I am hoping to uncork is something more eternally effervescent than a few ounces of liquid bubbly. I speak of inner re-awakenings, of God-given dreams that have grown old and stale, of soulful longings abandoned and forgotten. Dreams that were moved to the back burner, or put away as leftovers from an unrealized vision, will be re-heated with the flame of the burning spirit of the living God. The fireworks of which I speak can be lit only from the inside out, an inner epiphany that leads to an explosion of passion and purpose.
Both New Year’s restitutions and New Year’s resolutions are equally vital to new life. The New Year is a gift of grace enabling us to look back and admit our shortcomings and amend our ways, a time to restore the brokenness of relationships gone awry and confess the wrongs within ourselves that led to such predicaments. The New Year is also an opportunity to change things, to more intentionally plan for a life of meaning and self-discovery. But more important than either restitutions or resolutions is the deep down conversion called revolution. It is no less than the powerful overthrow of all that prohibits us from living into our God-given future and calling. It is the lifting up of our spirits to that place where we soar above the previously mundane and finally see the vista and the horizon for our lives that God has seen from our birth.
Such spiritual pyrotechnics are personal and transforming. It is the spark that sets in motion a chain reaction propelling us toward our ultimate place in the Universe. This is the holy endeavor, the great adventure, the dynamic possibility worth all sacrifice. I raise a toast not just to the New Year, but to the new me — fully lit, fully alive.
