Forget About It!

Given the fact that this would be the first blog entry I’ve posted in…well...over 3 months, I would say a reasonable resolution for 2011 would be to contribute more regularly. :)

But what’s the deal with New Year’s resolutions? I mean, really? What’s up with that?

Every January 1st, we suck it up, shed a tear and vow to do something we’ve been meaning to do or change the way we’re currently doing something. Why?

I mean, not “Why make the commitment?” But “Why are we so preoccupied with this special connection between change and the new year?”

I'm sure there are pages and pages of historical data to enlighten us on the origins of New Year's day and resolutions and all the spiritual and psychological intricacies surrounding it all. But on this, I would defer to one of the great modern sources of human knowledge and insight...Forrest Gump.

I think Cunning Carla…or maybe it was Long-legs Lenore who summed it up best. You know, one of the two girls in Forrest Gump who were partying on New Year’s with Forrest and Lieutenant Dan? And they’re at the bar, confetti is falling and she say’s "Don't you just love new years? You get to start all over. Everybody gets a second chance."

Let's get real.

It isn’t about finding an opportunity to do what we think is good or right or correct, is it? Do you think, in general, people are really that concerned with doing the proper thing? So much so that we spend billions of dollars during the month of January to help us do so?

When we get right down to it, down to brass tacks, to the real nitty gritty…it isn't about much other than getting the monkey off our back, is it? (Whatever your monkey happpens to be.)

Isn’t it about wiping our life-slate clean and trying to start over? I mean, at the end of the year, I can certainly say that I have a lot of junk on my slate…a lot of stuff that I would rather not have hanging around. A lot of history that I’d love to erase.

Isn’t that a universal commonality among people? Among humans? The desire to have access to the big ole biological delete button that undoes all the dirty missteps and thoughtless choices and mistakes and coulda-woulda-shouldas?

Just forget about it. “Fah get about it!”

But get real. We know there is no such button. There is no such thing as "starting over". There are no"do overs". Wiping it clean. Acting like it never happened. There is no such thing as unwinding a watch or unspringing what has been sprung. You can’t just forget about it. It's like the song says...

“She may forgive, but she don’t forget.”

Done is done is done. We can choose to move on from here (and that isn’t a bad thing). But there is no pretending that it didn’t happen, forgetting the past, erasing the memory of. It isn’t possible. I mean, we literally cannot do it. We do not have the capacity to forget something by choice. Not that we don’t want to, but we simply can’t.

And it gnaws away at us, doesn’t it? It kills us when we can’t do something. What is it with human beings (or is it just Americans), that if someone says “you can’t”, we become obsessed with proving that we can?

But like it or not, starting over is a biological impossibility.

Or is it?

I could refer to a lot of different things right here. But one of my most favorite and one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible is found in the rarely read book of Micah, in 7:19. It says…

“He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.”

And on in Psalm 103:12 we read that…

“as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”

God is the only one who has the ability to forget the past. He is the one to whom we should be making our New Year’s resolutions. (Or our any-time-of-the-year resolutions.)

God promises to cast our sins into the depths of the ocean…to the other side of eternity…so far away and inaccessible that we never need to worry about them ever again. God doesn't just forgive our sins; He wipes them completely away. In Hebrews 8:12 God says He will “remember no more” our sins.

Let me encourage you as we step into a new year, to use this time to let God do His thing. Let Him forget what has been done, and choose to move ahead, from today.

No, we can’t undo the affect our words and actions have had on the people and situations around us. And we can’t make those people pretend like things in the past, good or bad, didn’t happen. We are all forever touched by the actions of one another.

But God can look ahead into eternity and see the spiritual and eternal effects of those things, and make them simply *snap!*…disappear. And choose to never remember them again. Ever.

So my suggestion for a New Year’s resolution…resolve to make the ultimate change and let God cast your sins and your past and your regrets into the sea. As far as the east is from the west. Let God do what no man can do for you…what you can’t even do for yourself…

Forget about it.

Here’s to a bright and fresh and truly NEW year.

*** More scripture references for God’s willingness to forget our sins: Micah 7:19, Jeremiah 31:34, Hebrews 8:12, Isaiah 33:24, 37:17, 43:25

*** And for help or to speak with someone about how you can learn more about seeking God’s forgiveness and finding a new beginning, regardless of the time of year, you can email ricky@rickyfitzpatrick.com, contact your local body of Christian believers, or go to one of the following:

http://godtoday.com/saveme.htm

http://www.allaboutgod.com/prayer-of-salvation.htm

http://www.lifeway.com/salvation/

Or, even feel free to get in touch with someone from my own church home, Corner-Stone Baptist Church, here in Jefferson, GA or online at http://www.corner-stone.org/.