"Entering into the riches of Christ, by grace through faith"
Resolutions
Sometimes it's good to take stock of our lives and look afresh at the wonder and magnificence of God. Carolyn Arends (one of my favorite Artists) in a song "New Year's Day " wrote and sang this "This will be my resolution, Every day is New Year's Day, every day.. is one more chance to start all over,one more chance to change and grow, one more chance to grab a hold of grace, and never let it go."
I read the following 11 resolutons in John Pipers magnificent book "The Pleasures of God" ( page 97). They were given by Clyde Kilby a lecturer at Wheaton College in Minneapolis on 22/10/1976. I think they are a great focus for every Christian to keep us looking at the wonder and beauty of the grace of God.
| 1. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had
in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll,
the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder." 2. At least once a day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet travelling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me. 3. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death, when he said: "There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment and then nothing." 4. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding 24 hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood. [and womanhood!] 5. I shall not turn my life into a thin straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do. 6. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work. 7. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic" existence. 8. I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music. 9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggest, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now. 10. If for nothing more than the sake of a change of view, I shall assume my ancestry to be from the heavens rather than the caves. 11. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by an Architect who calls Himself Alpha and Omega. |