It is traditional for any vicar to write something in January about New Year resolutions. Every year I have the same problem, because I have never made a resolution for the New Year; how can I improve on my current state of perfection?…. The truth is that I do not make resolutions because I know that I will never keep them; I have a (partial) grasp of my own limitations.
One of the mantras in today’s world is about “being the best you can be”. On one level, it is hard to argue with this as an aspiration and it is a line I sometimes use when trying to encourage others. However, like empty New Year resolutions, it can be dangerous, when the person has an unrealistic vision of just what they are capable of being. It needs to be tempered with reality; that sometimes we will fail and we have to accept that some things are beyond us. Perhaps this is where one of the insights of Christianity can help. We believe that in some sense, we are all made in the image of God, God who is perfection. But for a whole range of reasons, that image is marred; as humans, after we are born things will very soon start to go wrong. But we are still loved and cherished by God despite all our failures and imperfections. We cannot always be the best we would like to be, our resolutions are often doomed to fail, but we are all still precious.
Rev David Poyner