New Year's Revolution

  “For God said to Moses, ‘I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.’ So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it.” Romans 9:15-16

  I am full of the cold. It hit yesterday with a vengeance leaving me feverish, coughing, achy and downright miserable. I was able to get through work with the help of illicit doses of cough medicine. (That’s ignoring the label’s recommendations.) Bedtime came early and I slept like a babe: whining, crying, waking through the night. (Smile.) That’s not true. I slept OK.

  Joking around yesterday, the idea came to change the idea of New Year’s resolutions into a New Year’s revolution. I was going to go through next year miserable, cranky, being mean to people, as well as being rude and demanding. By the time I finished the list which included many more ways to be mean and cruel, I was laughing at the foolishness. My co-worker was laughing at me, too. She knows me too well.

  But I like the idea of a revolution. They usually happen due to a revolt against the status quo, against the powers that be. So maybe we can have a quiet, peaceful revolution where kindness takes the place of cruelty, where manners take the place of rudeness, where demands are replaced by giving. Perhaps our revolution could be setting aside differences and prejudices, suspicions and hate. Greed can fall by the wayside, too, erased by gratitude.

  Perhaps our revolution, with the Cross as its standard, could be allowing our lives to be a better representation of the love of Jesus Christ in all we do and say and think.

  I had to pop into a hardware store on Boxing Day. With a to-do list hanging over my head, and feeling flustered by it, I confess I was rather abrupt with the cashier as manners flew out the window. I think Jesus smacked me upside the head because, before I left, I looked her in the eyes, smiled and thanked her for her service. You should have seen her response! Her smile outshone the stars!

   It takes just as much time to be kind as it does to be cruel.

  A Jesus revolution doesn’t have to wait. There’s no assembling of armies. There are no underground missions or subversive plots. There is no boot camp, no need to be promoted through the ranks before we can take up arms! And what an armory we have!

  Kindness, love, mercy and grace are four of the most powerful weapons ever made. So, too, is surrender.

  Oh, if you decide to take up arms for Jesus? Let your arms become a hug. There aren’t enough hugs in this ole world.