And then, nagging at the back of your mind, there is a memory from New Year’s Eve. Amidst the televised firework displays and the rounds of Pictionary and cheese and biscuits, there was a conversation about the personal ‘mountain’ you’d be climbing in 2007.
A resolution.
So, what’s yours?
It could be a Herculean commitment to get fighting fit – or at least fighting fat; or to pick up a drill and turn the garage into a granny flat, or put fingers to keyboard and finally draft that bestseller that will put J K Rowling to rout.
Or maybe you had a more pious aspiration: to learn the psalms off by heart, to pray every dawn, to get through John Stott’s entire back catalogue.
And a few days into January, whatever it was, is your resolve still holding? Or, like the fireworks of New Year’s Day, has it disintegrated into thin air?
According to one study, nearly 70 per cent of us will have given up on our resolutions by the end of February. It’s likely that our determination, however great, will dissolve into excuses: ‘I just didn’t have the time. Better luck next year.’
Perhaps we need the apostle Paul as our coach.
He seems to have had little interest in personal mountains; but when it comes to that communal struggle uphill known to us all as ‘church life’, he often sounds like one of those hearty types who hail you from the summit: ‘Come on, keep going! The view is fantastic!’
And he’s right. Whatever our ambitions for 2007, may we make Paul’s longing in Ephesians our own:
‘I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’
