A New Year's Revelation

So, the alcohol levels in the blood have subsided to a more 50/50 level. You are hoarse with hollering 'Hootenanny' at Jools Holland, and you have recovered from a whole lost Saturday of shopping. That'll be the New Year done then, chappies.

What now?

Well, in my last post, I banged on about the banality of our New Year Resolutions and how the notion of dropping a jean-size is perhaps not the pinnacle of personal achievment. However, I also recognise how that is easy for me to say, and rather than rabbit on, am going to place here my own resolutions, as made manifest at the time of the Great Revealing - The Epiphany.

1. At times I am a very considerate man, and at other times I am, well, a pig! I resolve this year to be more evenly considerate, perhaps focussing on the smaller things than being obsessed with the Grand Gesture. This is probably something to do with the fact that I am innately lazy, typically male, and a gob-on-a-stick.

2. The Blog thing - I wrote about this last year; I will give up writing for a day a week and instead read more (and comment more if the need arises). This speaks of a day of self-denial, a day when I will learn to put aside the things that give me greatest pleasure and do the other things that perhaps don't or have become forgotten. This will no doubt unfold throughout the months ahead.

3. Take in more - I hardly read, rarely listen but always 'do'. I preach many thousands of words, and I fail to underwrite them with  any kind of nourishment. I have already started to listen to the radio again after several years in the desert. Aled Jones annoyed me on the first of those days, but that is another blog post. However, to read and listen more infers a higher level of stopping and soaking. Both are lacking, both are needed.

4. The Temple - it has taken 38 years to get my Adonis-like form to the levels of perfection that I currently enjoy. My stomach is like half-a-dozen eggs in a box, my shoulders like coiled rope. My hair is lustrous and dark, my arms like the boughs of a tree. My legs are like taut springs. Then I wake up, and realise that as I look the mirror, some flabby eejit is looking back. My middle has vanished and my skin is like aging parchment. What to do? Something; just something. I am not sure what yet, but I need to exercise more for sure - perhaps walking more would be good, or cycling. Either way, the Temple granted me at my birth is failing its Quinquennial and some serious fundraising will be required for renovations soon otherwise.

Well, that is a start. What will you resolve to do this year? Answer the calling that you sense, talk to God more, or listen? Will you be true to yourself and that which God demands of you? In the end, the person you are is blessed with the gifts granted at birth just as the Kings gave the Baby his own gifts - and it is up to you how you use them to reveal God's purpose for you. Happy New Year, happy Epiphany, happy times ... I hope!