Resolution for 2008

Sometimes I see
How the brave new world arrives
And I see how it thrives
In the ashes of our lives

Oh yes, man is a fool
And he thinks hell be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he's astray
Keeps on going anyway.

Happy New Year! Happy New Year!
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy New Year! Happy New Year!
May we all have our hopes, our will to try.
If we dont we might as well lay down and die,
You and I.

So sang the Swedish group Abba at the end of 1980, looking with resignation to whatever may turn up, even to a possible Genghis Khan at the end of '89.

To the Lord of all time, what is a decade, anyway? To those of us in the physical world and are believers, this is a pilgrimage, often a desert, a wilderness, at other times a battlefield and sometimes a place where glimpses of what is to be transports us into unspeakable joy. But as creatures of eternity stranded in time we groan with the weight of passing time and our own failures, resolving to do better, falling, bruising ourselves and being healed and restored. In times of tragedy, wrestling with what we believe, and indeed, who we really are.

Having broken so many resolutions along the way, may I record here of another resolution to submit to God's grace: an active and resurgent prayerlife under every circumstance. If hope in Christ is not wishful thinking but a deposit of what is yet to be, then may I hope with all of me to commune with the Lord actively and long, every day of my life in every situation.