by Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas, Pastor, First UMC in Krum
www.thekrumchurch.com
We who live in the United States, a relatively young country, and especially we who live in Texas, a relatively young state, have somewhat of a unique perspective on the New Year that may not be shared with parts of the world with longer histories.
Besides being a fairly young area, we also do not have much continuity with the past where building structures are concerned. For example, most older buildings are torn down when they become inconvenient or dated, rather than preserved.
In addition, reality TV with the multiple extreme make-over themes also perpetuate the suggestion of discontinuity with the past. We can watch a messy family home turned into a place of neatness and order in just a few hours, or a body loss weight and become toned in just a few weeks, or a structure razed to the ground and re-built in seven days.
While those shows are fun to watch, I often wonder about the aftermath. What happens later to the world’s messiest family when their mess has been sorted out or to someone who has quickly and with powerful and externally enforced discipline loses a lot of weight? I’m betting past habits quickly re-appear.
Why? Because changing the outward circumstances, while often helpful, hardly ever produces lasting internal change. That kind of change takes a great deal of soul work and the practice of certain disciplines.
The way we were before informs the way we are now. They cannot be disconnected, no matter how much we try to do so.
Yet often people live from the idea that they can disconnect from their pasts when they make New Years Resolutions. We pretend our prior lives can disappear or that we can ignore the poor decisions we may have made or that we did not eat or drink all the things we should not have eaten or drunk. Indeed we can pretend, but it won’t work. We are those things, those successes and mistakes, those experiences, that food and drink. All of this has been integrated into our souls and bodies.
So if we can’t escape our pasts, what other options do we have? How about transforming our pasts? One way of transformation is the act of thoughtful, honest, intentional forgiveness. The Bible says that God’s mercies are new every morning. New mercies, sent our way each time we need them.
Mercy, often known as forgiveness, forms the centerpiece of much spiritual thinking. It is through the receiving of mercies, and then offering them to others, that we take our pasts, however rocky they may have been, and transform them into more merciful and more gracious presents.
In my own experience, the most difficult person to offer mercy to is myself. But that very act of taking our histories and bathing them in the light of fresh mercies brings joyful hope and freedom. Let us let 2010 be the year of the merciful, both for you and for others. Here, and only here, is true freedom.
