New Year’s Resolutions

It is that time of year when many people make resolutions. If the opportunity of a clean slate helps you and you find motivation to do something which enriches your life, then I wish you the best and I’m cheering for your success.

However, I suspect for many of us, these kinds of resolutions are driven by guilt or shame.

We resolve to lose weight, or work out, or change some “bad” habit we have. New Year’s resolutions can be a way of castigating ourselves for all the ways we think we don’t measure up to some standard.

Therefore, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you: You are worthy of love.

Exactly as you are.

There is nothing you have done or can do to make yourself unworthy of love, and also nothing you can do to make you MORE worthy of love.

The kind of transformation the gospel invites us toward is not born of heroic effort and discipline, but out of joyful freedom. As we accept God’s invitation to enter more and more into the beloved community we find that doing good is as light and natural as breathing.

So breathe, my friends. Whatever this last year held for you, exhale and let it go.

Whatever this new year promises, inhale and walk forward with trust in the one who always walks before us, beside us, within us, and behind us.

Happy New Year.

Rev. Aric Clark