Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

I wonder if you have a New Year’s resolution?

One always sees the inevitable scrum of folks coming to the gym in January. It gradually tapers off until it is the regulars again around March or so. People make their resolutions and then, with admirable predictability, proceed to break them with a galleon full of justifications and excuses.

We all do it because we’re all human.

Predicating some new way of being on the premise that you will not do all the things you have done for decades prior is generally not a recipe for success! We’re not really well built for revolutionary, sudden change. We’re creatures of evolution. We snap back to a status quo with fierceness while our souls and bodies more timidly embrace or tolerate change over time.

The change I suppose I’m hoping for in the new year is not some grand upending of old habits and patterns. What I’m hoping for in the year ahead is to draw closer to the one who formed us — to get nearer to the source and summit of our creation and preservation. It’s a kind of banal audacity — daring to not do more but to be more deeply.

I’m trying to resolve to sit quietly, more openly, more patiently near the center of our faith, hope, and joy. By that light I might see more clearly where Christ is pointing — and resolve to follow him more dearly.

Our being depends on God.

It is a closer encounter with the one who created us that might result in any real change. So we might resolve to do all manner of things — but next year we are still us. We are still who we have been. Yet we are also who we might be. That may not be the toned, wealthy, charming thing we’re all being sold in commercials right now.

But it may just be our perfection because it may bring us closer to Christ who is our perfection.

My this year find you drawing closer to perfection — resolved to be still and know God.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert