Beloved Church Family,
Everybody talks this time of year about a New Year’s resolution, or looking forward, or starting over. Allow me to talk instead about the past year. Because a resolution is simply a nice idea that you haven’t made come true yet. And the top ten resolutions have remained the same year after year, which means no one is actually losing weight, helping others more, quitting smoking, getting a better job, getting out of debt, drinking less, eating healthy, furthering their education, spending more time with family or learning Spanish. If the resolutions are the same year after year, our mistake isn’t failing to look forward, it’s failing to be in touch with our past and to learn lessons from our past.
A man named George Santayana wrote some words that he had no idea would be some of the most necessary for the century after he wrote them in 1905. He wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The world made decisions in the last 100 years that never need to be repeated: genocide, racial violence, unnecessary wars. And if the world forgets the punishment for humanity’s mistakes, it may be we will repeat those mistakes all over again.
In the same way, you made decisions this last year that should never be repeated. Take this hiatus to look back and ask what decisions those are, what situations led to those mistakes, reflect on who you really want to be and who you don’t want to be. If we are not in touch with our true selves, we will never be ready to allow God to make changes in our lives in 2015. When Santayana wrote that we were doomed to repeat history, he may not have known that the Bible beat him to that idea. Proverbs 26:11 says, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.”
The scriptures challenge us to identify what in our recent past is the vomit, and make a conscious decision and take conscious actions to never return to the vomit. The Bible is graphic and dynamic in this verse, more so in many other places, because this is the time we need a wake up call from God. So consider this your wake up call. Don’t look forward without first looking back. May you all, with God’s help, have a 2015 that is better than you could have ever imagined.
In His Love,
Bro. Joseph