Faces on Faith: ‘Don’t waste your breath’
The beginning of every New Year always brings with it the pressure to come up with a list of resolutions. If you’re like most people, you mean well when you make up your list, but find following through with them more than you can handle. You’ve probably found that to be the case after just several weeks of working on yours.
It would be easy just to chunk the whole business of resolutions and take life as it comes. But deep down, we know that facing a new day without any real plan or objective isn’t the best way to live. As the old saying goes, “If you aim at nothing, that’s exactly what you’ll hit.” We need targets to motivate us to do better, and New Year’s resolutions are about as good as any.
Maybe this year, it might help to seek God’s assistance in realizing your resolutions. After all, the life of faith is one of finding divine empowerment for challenges that are beyond us when we are left to our own resources. Scripture is filled with stories of people who did more than they ever thought possible, simply because God was their “inspiration.”
I like that word because of how it conveys both power and emotion, both of which are necessary for accomplishing difficult tasks. I like it also because of how it draws from the Genesis account of God’s creation of Adam and how God “breathed” (Latin, spirare) into him “the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7). It reminds us of how possibilities abound for those who are willing to be blown, guided, and directed by the spirit/breath/wind of God.
All of us have had the “wind” taken out of our sails by those who have told us in the face of some seemingly impossible task, “Don’t waste your breath.” But in this case (and in this New Year), that saying can actually be a reminder of where our strength really lies and how with God, “nothing is impossible” (Luke 1:37) — a truth we should not have already forgotten from the Christmas story.
With God’s help, this next year could be the best year in your life and in the life of our church. That’s enough to take our breath away … and replace it with one that promises to make all things new. So, put God first on your list, and you just may see that everything else doesn’t seem so unachievable after all.
The Rev. Dr. Doug Dortch is the pastor at the Captiva Chapel by the Sea.