Resolutions

As the clock neared midnight December 31^st, a guy posted on Facebook,  “I need to lose twenty-five pounds in the next ten minutes.”  Obviously he will have to rollover his 2012 resolutions into 2013. 

If you are like me, everyday is New Year’s Day.  Every morning I wake telling myself that I’m not going to eat as much today, need to exercise in the afternoon, read more, pray more.  Some days are good, others are a complete catastrophe, but, like Groundhog Day, I wake up the next morning with the same thoughts.  Need to pray better today, need to read my Bible, need to avoid food.   But how does one succeed with desired goals, resolved to improve mentally, spiritually and physically? 

Last week my eighty-eight year old mom was involved in a freak accident.  She got knocked down and run over by a car that was suppose to be in park.  Somehow the vehicle began to slowly roll down an incline and in the end my mom received a thirteen-inch gash on her right leg, multiple lacerations, a fractured finger and bruised from top to bottom.  After three days in the hospital, my brothers and myself have been taking turns spending the night at her house caring for her. 

Watching a football game at her house I heard mom talking in the other room.  I put the TV on mute and listened.  Mom was praying.  I eavesdropped for a while, listening to her pray, by name, for her granddaughters and great-grandchildren.  The next morning sitting in her chair before she woke up I picked up her Bible and read some of the scripture verses she had marked.  Later that afternoon she gave me a check to deposit for a mission cause she supports and I saw, from her shaky hand, another check she had written for the Billy Graham Association.  Though mom is unable to go to church these days, she still maintains giving her “tithe.”

It dawned on me this week that the way one fulfills their resolutions day-after-day, year-after-year, is to pay attention to the fundamentals.  My mom does not have an exciting life.  Some would even consider it boring.  She does not have a public ministry.  She is bound to her house, only able to get out if someone picks her up and takes her out.  Yet, my mom has learned the success of life, by paying attention to the fundamentals of life; prayer, Bible study and giving to God what meager things she has. 

Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost for His Highest, “All our promises and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to accomplish them.”   The only way anyone can have a fulfilled life is in Christ.  It is not our intentions that matter, but, like my mom, pay attention to the fundamentals each day.