- Feb 5, 2002
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In the Book of Revelation, John tells the story of a voice emanating from a large white throne, a voice that proclaims many things, among them the words, “Behold, I make all things new” (21:5). This voice of God, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, tells us that with him, there is newness of life. There is newness of hope. There is newness of being.
It is hard not to think of those words at the dawning of a new year. Everything is ripe with newness, brimming with potential. This is the year, we tell ourselves, that we’ll get into shape, write that novel, master our organizational skills or declutter the house. Maybe we’ll learn a new language or take that trip we’ve had mentally planned for a decade. These are all noble goals. I, myself, have many of them — though I am much better at ideating my New Year’s resolutions than I am at executing them.
Too often, all the potential of the newness of the year devolves into a list of basic goals — boxes to be checked to mark any number of worldly accomplishments. We forget that God has already made all things new. By nature of our baptism, we have been given the life of grace. We need now but to cooperate with it in order to reach our goal of life with God forever in heaven.
Maybe this is where the goals of our new year and the goals of the spiritual life overlap. How can we take the newness of the season and the gift of God’s grace and embrace them in tandem?
Continued below.
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It is hard not to think of those words at the dawning of a new year. Everything is ripe with newness, brimming with potential. This is the year, we tell ourselves, that we’ll get into shape, write that novel, master our organizational skills or declutter the house. Maybe we’ll learn a new language or take that trip we’ve had mentally planned for a decade. These are all noble goals. I, myself, have many of them — though I am much better at ideating my New Year’s resolutions than I am at executing them.
Too often, all the potential of the newness of the year devolves into a list of basic goals — boxes to be checked to mark any number of worldly accomplishments. We forget that God has already made all things new. By nature of our baptism, we have been given the life of grace. We need now but to cooperate with it in order to reach our goal of life with God forever in heaven.
Maybe this is where the goals of our new year and the goals of the spiritual life overlap. How can we take the newness of the season and the gift of God’s grace and embrace them in tandem?
Continued below.
3 practices to implement in the new year
With a new year around the corner, Gretchen R. Crowe, editor-in-chief of OSV News, offers three ways we can grow our spiritual lives this year. She writes: “Too often, all the potential of the newness of the year devolves into a list of basic goals — boxes to be checked to mark any number of...
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