From this day forward, Or, So this is the new year...

I suppose it is consistent with much of my temperament that I should like what New Year celebrations represent. After all, I use Lent as a time to reflect on Jesus' suffering for us, Advent as a time to prepare for Christmas and for Jesus' return. So what should New Year represent? A new start? A time of renewal? A time of resolution?

It's quite interesting to observe how different people manage the issue of New Year's resolutions. A guy I met on the New Year's Eve just gone told me that he had made a resolution six years ago which he's managed so far to keep. His resolution? To not make any more New Year's resolutions. Others recognise the need for resolve but feel awkward about the tradition - and understandably. For most, this time of year is a reminder of their own failings. With the buzz of the new year all manner of grand promises are made, and then...nothing. No difference.

Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie wrote a reflection on this some years ago which I now always think of each New Year:

So this is the new year

And I have no resolutions

For self assigned penance

For problems with easy solutions

Gibbard's words are relatively bitter, but they speak out of a recognition that the mere arrival of New Year's Day does not make us "feel any different". We are the same people, with the same failings.

But does it stop there? Interestingly, John Wesley saw New Year's Day as a time rich with symbolism for a renewed and transformed life, and so the old Methodist Prayer Book included a liturgy for the Covenant Renewal Service which was, I believe, to be read on the first Sunday of the new year. My church minister, a former Methodist now Anglican (the Methodists, after all, don't exactly exist in Australia any more), shared some of that service with us yesterday, with New Year's Day happily falling on a Sunday this year. This prayer that he read to us particularly stood out for me and I think it's a wonderful prayer for all believers to say at the beginning of their year. The parts in bold are read by the whole congregation.

Commit yourselves to Christ as his servants.

Give yourselves to him, that you may belong to him...

Let me be your servant, under your command.

I will no longer be my own.

I will give up myself to your will in all things.

Be satisfied that Christ shall give you your place and work.

Lord, make me what you will.

I put myself fully into your hands:

put me to doing, put me to suffering,

let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you,

let me be full, let me be empty,

let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and with a willing heart

give it all to your pleasure and disposal.

If, of course, we know anything about ourselves, we will know how monumentally hard that prayer is to pray. Perhaps, then, we need to start with a prayer of grace, a recognition that we cannot even pray these words without God enabling us: a prayer something like:

"Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." (Mark 9:24)