Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!
Time for me to kick off my no eating all exercising all the time plan. Matt is going to ensconce himself in the kitchen with a lamb roast and the big fat book on Grant that he’s been listening to. I’m going to muck out the children’s rooms and try to pretend that eating is the new Not Eating. And fat is the new thin. And cold is the new hot. That kind of thing. Oh wait! And filthy is the new clean! That will be my one for today.

As usual, I’m superstitiously sending my hopeful thoughts towards the universe for a 2018 that’s 33% better than 2017. I’m not going to bother to pray for this because I’m pretty sure God isn’t interested in this new bright shiny year being better for me in any terms that I would judge ‘better.’ Like, I want no one to get sick, no one to die, there to be no financial difficulties, for the church to become if not mega at least the beacon in the darkness to which thousands throng for salvation and truth, and for the children to be obedient, kind, perfect, and causing me no personal anxiety whatsoever. I’d like, essentially, to go from strength the strength, joy to joy, light to light, very happy to verily happy.

Whereas God, from all that I’ve gathered through bashing about the Bible and the Church, is tragically committed to my personal holiness, my being weak and humble (which generally feels perilously close to humiliation), kind to others, selfless, trusting, able to withstand trials and temptations, this list could probably go on indefinitely. To put it bleakly, my desires and inclinations are usually on a collision course with those of my Lord. I want him to make me comfortable and happy now, and he wants me to be able to withstand his glory later. So I am constantly irritated with him for letting me experience the ordinary and pervasive death of the cosmos, in order that I will desire his true life.

The Christian Life is one big long marshmallow test, but instead of even letting me chose to have the second marshmallow now, God is always putting it on the shelf and explaining that I will have it later, and to stop sniveling.

To sum up, I would like 2018 to be trouble free and dreamy, the rest I’m sure I need, whereas I am certain that God himself will constantly afflict me, will make many days difficult, will allow me to suffer the death of practically all my expectations and hopes all the time. And then, just when I am ready to pack it in and give up, he will give me some good thing that I didn’t even know before was good. He will bring some blessing into the light through which the full force of his salvation from my pathetic sin nature is abundantly obvious to even my dim spiritual eye.

Still though, may 2018 be 33% better than 2017 was. Shouldn’t be hard because 2017 was a doozy.