What is your idea of a better year? Or maybe a better you? What does that look like for you?
For me, I imagine more prayer and patience leading to a stronger relationship with God and those around me; a healthier lifestyle with better eating and more exercise, which improves my energy and appearance. As I imagine my year ahead, I realize I have already fallen woefully short before the first week is gone.
I compare my body and my life to those around me. How do I stack up? Am I “good” enough? Am I at least keeping my goals as long as my companions? Am I as thin, as successful, as spiritual (whatever that is)? Since others have seemed to succeed, I might dare to hope I’ll attain my goals too, or at least come close. Yet perfection seems ever elusive.
But what if I’m not even using the right yardstick? Comparison between fallen creatures is a low bar and all my efforts merely tinker at my decaying edges. What I am now is not what I was created to be. And as beautiful as the people around me are, they're not what they were created to be either. The truth is we are barely even recognizable compared to what our original design was – both inside and out.
If perfection and purity are nowhere to be seen in this world, then how is it we know things are not right? I wonder if the image we carry of what should be is a shadow of what once was and will come again. The glimpse of Eden and the promise of heaven we carry in our soul. The closer to God we dare, the more intense the awareness that all is not as it should be. We live with decay that only God can redeem and restore. And He will.
As I wait for the redemption of creation, I will pursue the awareness of His presence, knowing that I, too, am being redeemed. I will seek to be a good steward of the life I have here, physically and spiritually, because He allows me to participate in His work. Even though I fall, I long to be a willing vessel for His change and transformation that will be complete on that “someday” for which we yearn.
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. Isaiah 64:6
