Richard Littledale's
Views on the News: January 2009

All over the country, and indeed all over the world, people will be making New Year's resolutions. Some will be quite mundane, others brave and visionary involving personal risk and sacrifice. For the most part, all resolutions fall into one of two categories. Firstly, they concern something of which we want more - like fitness or time with our loved ones. Secondly, they concern something of which we want less - like smoking or excess weight. Research has shown that men fare better with keeping their resolutions if they split them up into manageable bits, and women fare better if they tell their friends about them. That way their friends can keep them in check and ask them how it's going.

Is a resolution more significant or worthy because of the person who makes it? If Barack Obama sits down at his new desk in the Oval Office and writes down a resolution on his untouched blotter to 'change the world in 2009', is that more significant than a recently unemployed auto worker in Detroit writing down the same thing on the back of an envelope? Obama's celebrated chant that "change will come" was built on the premise that an ordinary person could aspire to the highest goal and achieve it. If this is so, then the two resolutions have equal value, irrespective of the context in which they were written.

The Christian faith sets great store by our personal responsibility and value to God. It is as individuals that we respond to God in faith, as individuals that we accept or decline his offer of eternal life. Within its pages the Bible records the encounters of both Kings and peasants with the God who made them. On every occasion, their status before him is equal. He measures them not by the wealth in their pockets but the riches of their hearts. They are held accountable for what they do with what they have, rather than what they have itself.

If you make an honest resolution before God, he will undoubtedly help you to keep it. The resolution might affect only your life - such as a decision to eat less or drive less. Alternatively - it might have a much broader agenda - such as fair-trade or spiritual hunger. Make it with faith in God - and you might just be able to keep it the same way!