In this reflection for New Year, the Revd Jenny Mills, Deputy General Secretary (Discipleship), asks: “Are you planning on making a New Year’s resolution?”
I spent a lot of my life making such commitments and consequently a lot of time beating myself up when, inevitably, I fell short. I resolved to change my level of fitness, my eating habits, I focused on the things I felt I was doing or getting wrong. And as a consequence, I felt a failure because I had judged myself to be “not enough” and my inability to stick to my resolutions that were going to make me “better” just compounded that sense of failure. I was so busy focusing on what I thought I ought to be and what was expected of me that I lost sight of who I was and who God had called me to be.
This year, I have decided to remind myself that I am enough, just as I am. Yes, there are things I could do better and things I could improve about how I live my life BUT the person I am is good enough, just as I am.
And do you know what? So are you. Each and every one of you!
It is good to stop and think about life. It is good to seek to find out how to be more like the person God created each one of us to be, but starting from the premise that we are not good enough as we are, is destructive and unhelpful.
Psalm 139 tells us: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
In this text we are reminded, by the Psalmist, that we are amazing and that we are God’s creation. But more than that, we are reminded that God does not make mistakes. That God’s work is wonderful and that we are part of that wonder.
Let us begin the new year with love – for ourselves, for our neighbour, for God and trust that is enough and will make a difference in the world – and that we don’t need to give up things in order to be loved!
Watch Jenny speak about her reflection: