The year has passed. Each day has died with the setting sun never to rise again, but the steps we took each day have brought us to this place. The New Year may be fresh with potential, calling us to look back on the road we have come and consider re-directing our steps, but we rose today at the same spot we left off last night. Flipping the page of our calendars does not create some magic door to Narnia. We may renew our resolve, but we rose today with the same mental and physical and emotional energy that we had yesterday. Be gentle with yourself. Each year is a marathon, not a sprint, and coming too quickly out of the gate is sure to backfire, leaving you exhausted, discouraged, and shamed.
If this is your time for an annual audit, and you find you have come short of your own expectations and goals, perhaps the fault lies with unrealistic goals, not weak efforts. Perhaps the voices inside your head demanded too much of you. In that case, rather than redoubling your efforts, you might consider trimming down your goals. But even if you did lose your way last year, you cannot “make up for it” now without straining your soul. Leave those failings in the gracious hands of God to redeem, to re-touch with His masterful skills. You cannot get back in God’s favor by redoubling your efforts because you never lost His favor, for His grace is unshaken by our failings. Use those failings to call you back to His grace, to stop trusting in your own goodness and to trust more fully in the goodness of God, who loves you regardless of your shortcomings. Perhaps this year resolve to settle more deeply into God’s grace, to be more accepted rather than more acceptable.
Let grace set the course ahead for this year. Resolve to live more fully in the consciousness of God’s love. Instead of harnessing your spirit to unwanted demands like a bull dragging a sledge, pursue those things that will lighten your journey, give you wings instead of weights, release your spirit to truly live. What puts a smile on your face, bounce in your step, peace in your soul? Perhaps those are the new year’s plans that will energize you to find delight in God. Perhaps it is not resolutions you need–a call to the will to override your desires–so much as New Year’s Joys–a call to the heart to fulfill your deepest desires. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Janathan Grace Reflections 
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