I’ve always been wary of New Year’s resolutions. The theory sounds great – reviewing, analysing, making positive decisions and launching forth into new activities – but all too often, I have found myself making unrealistic promises to myself that become another rod with which to beat myself when I fail to live up to those promises. Setting more realistic goals is a better option, but even then, there is a fine line between a realistic goal and setting the bar so high that even an Olympic high jump champion would struggle to surmount it. I don’t need diets and fads; I need an alternative way of eating, for example. I haven’t got hours to spare to work out like Mark Wahlberg (who reputedly rises at 2.30 a.m. to fit in a workout before the start of the day), but even if I had, I often still have places to go at 8 p.m. (when he retires to bed,) I am not criticising anyone else’s routines, but am very aware that if I tried to emulate that one, I would fail on Day 1.

I think some of my disquiet about New Year’s resolutions lies with the fact that they are more often than not associated with doing or not doing (learning a new skill, taking up a new sport or hobby, giving up alcohol, giving up certain foods) and not often associated with being. It’s so much easier to focus on doing than it is on being and becoming.

Every year, I start again at Genesis 1 in my Bible readings and come face to face with the fact that God created the world in a flurry of divine activity that was manifested in speaking. I also come face to face with the fact that at the end of six days, He rested. He didn’t need to in the way I do (because He was exhausted, overtired or at the end of His tether!), but in resting, He showed me the value of stopping. He gave me a model to follow: sleep at night, instead of striving continually (see Ps 127:2); rest one day a week, secure in the knowledge He doesn’t slumber or sleep (Ps 121:3-4) This ‘abdication’ of activity doesn’t sit well with me, but the Biblical pattern puts God, and not me, on the throne, and that has to be a good thing.

What if my goals for 2019 were more focussed on resting, on listening, on being and becoming than on achievements, success and ticking off another language learned or another hobby perfected? (Not that there’s anything wrong in those things, I hasten to add.) What if I focussed more on who I am than on what I do?

The Puritan work ethic which I have imbibed since birth shrieks at me that this is a passive attitude which will not lead to the furtherance of God’s kingdom, that God has got good works all lined up for me to complete (Eph 2:10) and that I could not possibly see fruit from this focus on being. I am struck by how Jesus answered the devil’s temptations in the wilderness with calm certainty. The devil came with the sly phrase ‘if you are the Son of God’, but Jesus had no need to prove his identity to the devil or manipulate God in any way. The time He had spent with His Father in those hidden thirty years meant He was so soaked in the word of God, He had the answers He needed all ready. (Matt 4:1-11) Only as we spend time with our heavenly Father will we have the direction, energy and resources we need to do the will of God in our day, in our place, in our world. We serve not out of duty or resolution, but from the place of being loved and knowing who we are in God.