Resolutions and Purpose...

Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas this year? Are you satisfied, yet? Anyone drink too much at a family gathering and insult a guest or a sibling? How well did you eat? I’m not referring to how much; I’m talking about how well? Did you pig out on stuffing and sweet potatoes, pecan pie, and coconut cake? Have you started to think about how big your charge card bill will be when you open it in January?

Did the coronavirus, or fights over the Presidential election at Thanksgiving, change the composition of your holiday invite list?

Are you beginning to bargain? Are you promising yourself next year will be different? More controlled? Fewer regrets?

“My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.”

Isaiah 46:9-11

I hear people say all the time that they’re done with making resolutions; no more for them! What I suspect they mean is that they’ve lost hope of finding solutions to their problems. Past performance demonstrates that nothing will ever change, so they stop trying. I want you to know that simply because you haven’t found a solution in the past does not mean there isn’t one. If you have some area in your life that you know is incongruent with God’s big dream for you, then I promise you: a solution is available. God’s purposes stand. He purposes and plans for you to have a decent life stands. If you’ve got something that’s holding you back, find someone who once had the same issue and ask them to share their experience, strength, and hope. Then do the next right thing.

Day 18: The Gift of Presence

One of the best gifts any of us could give or receive this year is the gift of presence - even if it requires us to be creative in making that happen. Spiritual friends learn how to set aside their own preoccupations and distractions. They listen, opening themselves up to the experiences of others. Mature spiritual friends have the awareness to attune themselves to the presence of God in the conversation as well. Soul companions learn how to give and receive dialogue. They consider conversation a sacred trust – cherishing, nurturing and holding the privilege as sacred.

I regret my youthful perspective when it came to my grandparents. As they aged, they were forced to make concessions in light of their declining health (which in my youth I could not understand). My grandmother bought a small, artificial tree. It was hideous, scantily clad with a stingy array of fake pine needles (dyed white) and a few miserly lights. It made Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree look like an award winner. I fussed and fussed about the tree. I told my grandmother in no uncertain terms that this particular tree was an affront to the meaning of Christmas.

Here’s what I wish I had known to do instead. I wish I had put down my childish ways and paid attention to what the tree was teaching me. My grandmother was getting tired. She was laying all earthly things aside. She hadn’t lost her Christmas Spirit, so much as she had learned that all the hoorah surrounding the commercialization of Christmas was meaningless. I could have learned a lot from her if I had listened better. My grandmother was getting to the essence of what is most important in life, not giving up the gift of Christmas cheer.

Again, when we know better, we do better.

I never thought my mother, the Queen of Christmas Cheer, would fall victim to the tabletop Christmas tree. But she did. When she started chortling about her clever way of throwing a sheet over that tiny tree and having Bob haul it to the basement for easy decorating the next Christmas, I knew this time what I was seeing. I applauded her ingenuity. I marveled at how those ornaments seemed to cooperate with the move up and down the stairs with Bob’s hurried steps. I knew in my gut that my mother was not well.

When we know better, we do better.