A New Year
What is it about humanity that desires a do-over? Every year, people make a half-dozen commitments to better physical, mental, and relational health. Isn’t it interesting that New Year’s resolutions typically do not include resolutions to “make more money” or “become more wealthy”? Instead, they are peppered with desires to be better people with better relationships, better well-being, and better work-life balance. Why?
I think there is something fundamental about the way humanity longs for this do-over.
It is a silent cry for a broken world made whole. In the very act of making New Year’s resolutions, we emphatically state that we know our world is not the way it is meant to be. Heck, we are not as we are meant to be. Each year, we reach for a clean slate, only to mess it up within weeks. We are caught in a vicious cycle of recognizing our brokenness, striving to repair it, only to return to our broken state a short while later.
Here’s the kicker: As broken people, we try to fix our broken lives. But we can’t. Something that is broken cannot repair itself. We certainly try to do it, but we repeatedly fall back into frustration and despair as we fail over and over again.
Now, before you join me on the cycle to absolute nihilism, let me share the good news:
There is Someone who is capable of fixing the brokenness completely.
He is able to restore every shattered place in your life and make it beautiful, whole, and thriving.
However, there is a catch to this good news, one that prevents a great many people from beginning this journey to being made whole. It requires surrender. In order to be made better, we must acknowledge that there is actually nothing that we can do to begin making ourselves better. Our betterness starts with surrender of control. What a paradox!
Hear me out. This surrender does not mean we give up living or working toward being better people. Instead, it means that we live out from a deep knowing that our wholeness is not a result of our own doing and that redemption from our brokenness is a gift. The One who is Holy makes us whole. And as we recognize His wholeness in us, we are able to live from a place that is slowly but surely being repaired.
The call of surrender is a call to obedience.
It requires faith, trust. It means looking into all that brokenness inside of you and offering it up to the One who lovingly gathers all the pieces to Himself, slowly putting them back together in a way that only He can because only He knows the map to your truest self. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are a passive observer, though. The call to obedience begins to work its way into every area of your life: your work, your health, your habits, your passions, your family. Perhaps there is something that He is calling you to, which may indeed be pursuing physical health that has been sidelined for too long or relationships that have been ignored. We are called to joyfully participate with Him in a beautiful integration of all these areas. We’ll mess up. Absolutely, we will. But His grace lovingly picks us up, brushes us off, and says, “Try again.” And when we do, we obey Him and we take small, wobbly steps toward integration and wholeness in every area of our lives.
For further reading:
Mulholland Jr., M. Robert. Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, expanded edition, 2016. (also on Kindle)
Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, expanded edition, 2015. (also on Kindle)
