New Year Resolutions: Do They Really Matter?

New Year Resolutions: Do They Really Matter?
By Horane Smith

As a New Year begins on our man-made calendar, many people have set resolutions that seek to make them a better person, or to improve their lot. Some have gone to their psychics, soothsayers, astrologers or palm readers to try to determine what lies in store for them in the future.

However, what would be interesting is to see at the end of the year, what has been achieved by these resolutions, or consultations with those whom they believe have an insight into their future. We might very well be in for a surprise.

The truth is we are not in charge of our own destiny "time and chance happen to us all," and one moment we are here and the next we are dead. Life is like a dream.

The resolutions we make have become a ritual at the end of each year. And while it is good that we can set some Goals in life, often times we don't seek the things we ought to be seeking. Most times, these resolutions centre on self; this opens the door to selfishness, greed, materialism and omission of the single most important experience in our lives - a relationship with the Living God.

We are so taken up in pursuing material goals that we become too busy for God, who gave His only begotten Son Jesus, the Christ, to redeem us from our sins so that we can seek eternal life. What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and ends up losing his own soul? the gospel of Matthew asks. Yet we stand in danger of falling into this trap if we invest in cisterns that cannot hold water.

"We Are Doomed," said the headline in a British newspaper reporting on Prime Minister Tony Blair's New Year's address. The Prime minister was commenting on the challenges facing Britain in 2003, and he summed it up in those three words. The world doesn't hold a lot of promises for a bright future; not with the troubled Middle East, possible war with Iraq, North Korea's admission of a nuclear weapons programme, famine in some African countries, the frightening prospects of AIDS, the resurgence of some dangerous diseases, destruction of the environment, crime, terrorism, drug abuse, sexual perversion, cloning, and the list goes on.

What should we make of these realities facing us each morning we rise from our slumber? The Holy Bible says "as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the end." Many of us would have thought that the days of Noah were truly bad because all manner of wickedness was on the land. How would you compare Noah's days to now - an age of technological advancement of mind boggling proportions? If it was that bad then, how would you describe these haunting prospects facing us? Are we then in the time of the end spoken of by the bible? Should our resolutions then be focussing more on things spiritual.

In Psalm 63. 1, David says "O God thou art my God, early will I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee, my flesh longs for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is." Our land needs the Word of God; our world needs the Word of God to achieve real hope - true hope.

Lest we forget, a time is coming when all shall appear before God to give an account of himself. If you are an agnostic, or an atheist it doesn't matter, you will still have to bow before the Eternal. All knees shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Our politically correct world will not accept that now but in due course it will because there comes a time yet future when "the knowledge of God will be as the waters cover the sea." A time when God's "law shall go forth out of Zion," when the Kingdom of God is established on the earth and the Kings of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, shall be ruling from Jerusalem with a rod of iron.

If, and when, we make these resolutions let us bear in a mind a time when there will be no more wars, diseases, or death, no pain, no sorrow but everlasting life. Examine yourself and ways of getting closer to God. Our life now is like vapour, says the book of James. Let's invest in a new life - the one made possible by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.