Step Into The Light

On July 1 each year my domestic calendar reads:  Rethink those resolutions.

It’s not my favorite entry; but there’s no way I can ignore it. It’s the one I most respect and try my best to do something about.

It refers, of course, to the habit most of us have of thinking up worthy New Year’s Resolutions early in January, even if we know perfectly well we’ll have forgotten about them by the first day of February.

Hence my diarized effort to resurrect the best features of what’s left of those earlier ambitions and goals.

As columnist Tish Harrison Warren suggested in Christianity Today, it’s time to rethink some key questions: How many books have you read so far this year? Have you refined your cooking skills? Increased your step count? 

She asks whether we’ve fully explored the benefits of outdoor living; prayerfully observed the Sabbath; and practiced patience.

She notes historian Robert Louis Wilken’s observation that patience outfits faith, guides peace, equips humility, waits for penitence, seals confession, keeps the flesh in check, bridles the tongue, tramples temptation underfoot, and removes what causes us to stumble.

At this halfway point, Warren encourages us to do some rethinking and share our life with others in such a way that those we meet will ultimately be drawn closer to us—and, I might add, us to them.

She also asks whether we’ve allowed the Divine to reshape our resolutions in consistent and creative ways? 

To which I would add Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s observation that “every dawn is a new one, and every year [—and half-year]—an opportunity to step into the light.”