The thing about temptation… is that it’s so hard to resist. 

As I sit at my laptop, I am earnestly struggling against a host of temptations:

• I’m tempted to stop writing so I can check my email or read the news; or worse yet, fall into the bottomless pit of a Pinterest infinite scroll.
• I’m tempted to daydream as I look out the window, keeping watch on the movement of neighborhood squirrels and woodpeckers.
• I’m thinking maybe I could use a cup of tea…

I also struggle against temptations within my writing.  It’s almost New Year’s and so there are a host of tempting clichés to choose from in my writing.

• There’s the perennial favorite:  the top 10 list. 
• There’s the decade in review.
• There’s the pedantic reminder that the decade doesn’t actually end until 2021, but even I refuse to be so finicky.
• There is the temptation that I have been struggling against since it first entered into my cliché-ridden brain from which I vow to abstain.  I will not speak about having a “2020 Vision.”  I leave that chestnut for a preacher even cornier and less creative than me (if one can be imagined).

It’s the time of year when we are supposed to be pledging to resist temptation in the year to come and to be better people.  (Of course, one should make one’s resolutions quietly to oneself so there are no witnesses to remind us later of the many ways we have failed to fulfill our resolutions.)

Should I make a New Year’s resolution or two? Sure, why not?  As self-improvement projects go, there’s plenty in my habits and character to keep me busy in 2020 and beyond.  My previous lack of success shouldn’t prevent me from trying again.  After all, any incremental improvement would be welcome, and the effort toward improvement may at least slow my gradual degeneration.

I’m trying to resist all those well-worn New Year themes and just invite you to remember that this time of endings and beginnings should be our natural habitat.  As Christians, we believe that new life springs forth from empty tombs.  There is no rising without descent.  There is no resurrection that is not preceded by death.

You may not be particularly eager to hold onto 2019, but we tend to cling to things as they are – even when they’re killing us.  As people of Easter hope, we have to bravely let our old ways of thinking and living die.  We must have the courage to risk setting aside our own self-understanding and allow a new story about us to be written.

I leave you with the words of a hymn that speaks to me about this life of endings and beginnings:
“In the cold and dark of winter there’s a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”

Prayer:  God of life, as we come to the end of another year, another day, another breath, we look to your life at work in us to make us new.  Amen.