For Wilshire Baptist Church
I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions because, first, I’m easily distracted, and second, life can get in the way and throw even the most focused person off track. But something I heard in the early days of Advent has pushed me into the new year with a new perspective.
Monsignor Don Fischer, longtime Sunday radio voice of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas and founder of the Pastoral Reflections Institute, posted an early Advent video homily titled “Autonomy.” He talked about how people are blessed with amazing talents and gifts, and they believe that their purpose in life is to achieve things and to be self-sufficient with those God-given talents and gifts. We were created, instead, primarily to be in relationship with God and to work with God.
Fischer said he believes that God is saying, through the scriptures and the model of Jesus, “I want us to become so intimate that one can’t tell whether it’s you or me operating in each moment.” And then Fischer shared this lovely thought about what might happen at the end of life: “Wouldn’t it be amazing if you sit down with this God, and you’d see him and he’d see you, and you start reminiscing about all the things you did together.”
Oh my. That perspective just turns everything on its head. If lived out fully, it gives everything we do purpose: every big thing, every little thing, and everything in between. In the language we like to use at Wilshire, it gives “every body” purpose. In the language of writing, it makes me no longer the subject or object of my sentences. It makes me want to be the verb — the compound verb with God, actually. It transforms the overused WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) into WWWDT — What Would We Do Together?
So instead of having a “to do” list of resolutions for this new year, I want to have more of a “how to do” list, with the “how” answered simply: together with God.