Friday, December 29, 2006
New Year Resolutions
Dear Friends,
The other day I came across some celebrity New Year Resolutions from three years ago, New Year’s Day, 2004 :-
Paula Radcliffe: ‘I want to stay fit and get ready for Athens’;
Tim Henman: ‘I’ve been injured and so I want to climb the world rankings again’;
Matthew Pinsent: ‘I want to savour Olympic Year and do all I can for the London 2012 bid.
As New Year resolutions go, these seem pretty good. They are optimistic, challenging and, in their own terms, very worthwhile aims for the coming year.
But looking back from the future, they make rather sad reading.
You probably remember what happened to Paula Radcliffe in Athens; Tim Henman couldn’t resist the march of time and he continues to fall in the world rankings; and even the euphoria of winning the 2012 bid has now been replaced by wrangling and recriminations over contracts and costings.
So as I look back at these resolutions from three years on, I find them deeply challenging. What am I aiming at in my life right now that won’t look a bit silly a few years from now? And how about at the end of my life? Which of my aspirations will still look as worthwhile then as they do now?
A man was reading the details of another man’s will in The Times. His friend asked him, ‘How much did he leave?’ ‘All of it,’ he replied. It’s an old joke but still true.
Jesus would say to us, ‘Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.’
He would say, ‘What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?’
Jim Elliott was a young American who with four friends went to South America in the1950s to try and bring the message of Jesus Christ to the Auca Indians of the Ecuadorean rain forest. They were murdered by those they were trying to befriend. He once wrote,
‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.’
That sounds like a good New Year resolution to me.
Happy New Year!
Tim Ling
Vicar, St. Swithun’s Church Bathford