More or Less

A wonderful picture of life without Christ is the experience of passing from the old year to the new one. Standing on the edge of that old and looking to the prospects and hope of the new, we resolve. We resolve to do what I call “More or Less.” We resolve to eat less, drink less, waste less, worry less, spend less, and any other “less” we can think of. We also resolve to run more (or walk), pray more, read more, save more, vacation more, friend more, trust more, hope more, even love more; and any other “more” we can conjure up. These resolutions take place in the blink of an eye, when the clock strikes midnight, then the humanity kicks in.

Many of us resolve because we couldn’t resolve during Xmas (please see my previous blog entitled, “My Xmas Rant”). We have pigged out during the ramp up to the baby Jesus’ arrival and we know. If one were to count how many almond rocas we have stuffed down our gullets, we would probably be shocked. I loved every one of them, over and over and over again. I resolve to not have any almond roca in 2012; until perhaps the 10th of December, when the church folk bless me with tins and tins (which adds up to tons and tons) of almond roca. We resolve to quit this and start that, to less this and more that and we set ourselves up to fail, fail fail.

Jesus, Himself, tried to give us a clue about our own power to effect real change in the face of the typical challenges we confront. He said in Matthew 26:41, “Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The flesh is weak. The depth of that phrase is more or less the crux of our earthly experience. We want to do the right things, we want to “More or Less” our lives, but we do not have the “umpf” to truly accomplish our goals. Paul says that he beat his body so as to make it his slave (rather than the body making us our slave to appetite), so he would not be disqualified. Not from the grace of God, but from the living each day as an example. For Paul to have accomplished this was only based on his awareness that he could do all things through Christ who strengthened him (Phil. 4:13). The same goes for us.

We will only master the “More or Less” of a new year when we enslave ourselves to the Master. Enslave sounds so rough and medieval, but sometimes we don’t get it unless we see how all encompassing it must be to give our lives to Him. This is accomplished when we realize that there must be more of Him and less of us and just do it. Without Christ richly moving in each of our lives we will flounder on in this life, more or less. We will, every year, make our decisions to “More or Less” our lives and fall short, if He is not an integral part of our every endeavor.

I pray this New Year that we might come to the only one who can make a difference in the New Year; that we might submit to Him and see what more of Him and less of us is like. And that’s more or less what I wanted to say.

Happy New Year!