I pondered over the title, “Resolution Road,” for January 1st, with a clean, fresh path stretching ahead. When I snapped the photo on my iPhone, it took several tries to find the angle and capture the scene before snow melted off branches. And it has now, just days later, like resolutions might or will dissolve. But each January it makes sense to come up with resolutions. A few on my list: keep practicing at writing and read books slowly.
In Karen Swallow Prior’s book, On Reading Well, she promotes slow-reading in an effort to absorb meaning and allow time for absorption. She even applauds slow readers as being, perhaps, the best readers.
As for the practice-more-at-writing resolution, here’s an analogy that recently helped me: Just like basketball players and artists must practice their skills to succeed, so must writers. This is why each of my blog posts has a writing prompt at the end.
In practicing as a writer, embarrassing rookie mistakes will be made. And as for resolutions, how resolute can any one person actually be? People change, or encounter interruptions, or fail. Even in small ways, like a bad attitude, a sharp tone, or larger—a lack of trust in God’s goodness— the everyday moments show the heart is not resolute, not always faithful, and far from good.
But God is.
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be white as snow” (from Isaiah 1:18 ESV).
After the coming of Jesus (Christmas), he would later go to the cross and abolish the power of sin. That’s the snowy-white fresh start for all who believe.
My over-arching resolution is to admit wrongness and lean into the One who is always right. Righteous is an adjective for God, and he lets that same adjective be for us complainers, doubters, and failures at keeping resolutions as we lean into him and his rightness.
I hope to include blog posts this year that are considerate of each reader’s time, and to use words that encourage thought and growth. Thanks for reading. Happy New Year.
Writing Prompt: List five adjectives descriptive of the past year, then write five adjectives for how you hope to describe yourself in the upcoming year.
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