Resolutions

New Year resolutions.  By now – late April – most of them have been forgotten longer than it took to break them.  I always think these might be a good idea.  I occasionally have good intentions about making and actually keeping one, possibly two.  Execution seems to be a significant problem.

Recently I read a post about making an Easter Resolution and I have to admit to being intrigued by the idea.  While the start of a new year marks a turning point in the calendar, Easter marks a timeless turning point.  The defeat of death and the flinging wide of the approach to the throne of the Lord God Almighty is as irreversible as was the tearing of the temple curtain from top to bottom.

Easter reminds us that we are new creatures in the risen Lord.  That death is simply another door we walk through, not a defeat or the end of the line.

So an Easter Resolution could focus on those things that can help us trust Him more, seek Him, answer the door when He knocks.  Those things that aren’t just temporal or worldly in nature but that ready us for the New Jerusalem.  I’d go so far as to suggest that perhaps the tradition of “giving something up for Lent” also gives us the opportunity to practice a potential Easter Resolution, especially if what we give up is something that taints our soul or our character.

While I tend to give up things like candy or caffeine, my daughter this year gave up complaining.  Wow.  How’d she get so smart?  What a great “give-up”.  That falls in that category of “wish I’d thought of that” and also in that category of what great practice for an Easter Resolution.

Hmmm.  I probably should have given up procrastination for Lent so I’d have been ready to make an Easter Resolution.