A New Resolution

You will remember your sins and cover your mouth in silence and shame when I forgive you of all that you have done, says the sovereign Lord.

- Ezekiel 16:63

January is a month for resolutions. Lose weight. Stop gossipping. Start having a quiet time. Give more money to the church. Spend extra time with your kids. Read some good books. Read any book.

But this year, I'm making a resolution unlike any other that I can remember making. My resolution is to start living in reality. To recognize the stark and painful truth of the pseudo-life I so easily fall into living and trade it for something incredible and eternal . . . reality in Christ.

"Today, disposable reality eclipses commanding realities that would challenge us as moral agents" (James M. Houston, Joyful Exiles).

The word of the Lord, as I've heard it over and over in recent months amid some hectic holiday celebrating and even more hectic packing and moving and settling into a new home, is about as straightforward as it can get: REPENT, REPENT, REPENT.

Scripture presents the message loud and clear, but when our Bibles are closed, we aren't likely to hear it. And though pastors and priests may urge us from the pulpit, if our hearts are hardened and closed, we are even less likely to receive it.

So, we wallow in ourselves another day, another week, another year. We build an impressive collection of excuses and justifications for every behavior, every routine and every choice in our lives. We glance around at those who live around us and side by side with us day in and day out and we figure that overall we're doing at least as good as, in fact probably better, than they are.

To the outside observer, it appears that everything is under control. And because we do such an effective job of convincing others that we are admirable, we are usually able to convince ourselves in the process as well. But whether we like it or believe it or not, God looks on our hearts, and He isn't even remotely impressed.

"Man is a fallen being . . . gripped by original sin: a creature who produces evil as a bee produces honey" (William Golding).

Yet, in the mercy of God we have one incredible option through repentance for redemption from a neverending cycle of deception and ultimate destruction. And we dismiss it time and again because it requires us to sacrifice something disturbingly precious to us, something many of us seem all to willing to die for . . . our ego.

It's amazing the lengths we'll go to in an attempt to preserve it. In fact, when given the opportunity to choose every day between self and friends, self and faith, self and family or self and Freedom, we choose self hands down every time. Nothing but self is sacred, and left to natural inclinations, we'll protect it at almost any cost.

Sadly, because of this, we live in unreality. We live in a false world where we label ourselves, who we are and what we do, as good and everyone and everything else as bad. We are noble, while all those around us are base and untrustworthy and potentially threatening.

As a result, sometimes without even realizing it, we keep what seems like a safe distance in order to prevent our good selves from being contaminated or disrupted by disappointing people and a distant God. And even when we reach out to those we want to like or love or help, what we give is tainted by our fearful condition.

"You cannot love those you fear. And we are called to love. Be not afraid" (Robert Benson, The Body Broken).

Ultimately, over months and years of life, though we think we have found security in our self-made confine, what we have found is a personal prison from which we can interact with the world only awkwardly and incompletely through bars of skepticism and suspicion.

It's Satan's greatest triumph over us! We're trapped in a cell built stone by stone with our own hands. And still, God holds the only key . . . REPENT.

We desire justification and self-vindication, but it's a fantasy. It's chasing the wind. There is nothing to vindicate. Self apart from Christ is a myth. That which does not exist, that which has no Life cannot be vindicated. We are but dust, we are without Breath. Unless we repent, we cannot come alive.

" . . . becoming real is only possible when we humbly face the sin in our own life and then live in the light of the eternal. Without a true awareness of sin and of grace, our life is condemned to unreality . . . Only in prison, symbolic or physical, does one learn the true meaning of freedom: liberation from one's self."

- Joyful Exiles

I don't know about you, but in this new year and for the rest of the years to come, I want to live . . . really live!