You Say You Want a Resolution

Every twelve months or so the Sun completes its giant lap around the Earth, marking the beginning and end of what we call a year. To celebrate this rather ordinary occurrence, we set off fireworks, drink champagne, and watch pre-recorded footage of a giant ball dropping while saying to ourselves, “Seacrest is no Dick Clark.”

This next year will be 2007, and it marks the two thousand and seventh anniversary of Jesus’ third birthday. And why did we start counting from His third birthday? Dale Earnhardt of course. Actually, it is because a Monk named Dionysius Exiguus, who in his own little Y2K, forgot to carry the two when he multiplied, thus screwing up every calendar ever made. Some people say we should just add three years to our calendar and correct the mistake. Of course some people are idiots. Adding three years to the calendar would not only change every important date I had to memorize in history class, it would also totally ruin the lyrics to Frankie Valli’s “Oh, What A Night”.

So when January 1st rolls around the year will still be 2007, and we will all make lists of things we plan to do, or things we hope not to do, during the Sun’s next journey around our great planet. We call these lists resolutions, and if you are reading this article anytime after noon on New Years Day, you have probably already broken yours. That is because we tend to list difficult things, like giving up Snickers, or reading the Bible from cover to cover, then when confronted with peanuts and caramel covered in milk chocolate, or the Book of Numbers, we fold like lawn chairs.

The most common New Year’s resolution of all is to lose weight, but if you take a peek at the most resent obesity statistics, you know most of these last about as long as a Britney Spear’s marriage. And in America even those living in poverty are obese, often more so than the wealthy. I can hear the historians hundreds of years from now talking about our crumbled society, “They became so decadent that even their poor were fat. Just look at the size of these sweatpants we unearthed!” I wish I had a solution to this, but instead I am part of the problem, seeing that my wife and I gave our Angel Tree kid a PlayStation game for Christmas. I guess the best we can do is make sure our kids do get some exercise, and constantly remind them that fast food is made out of dead people. Fat, juicy, delicious dead people. Of course if they still want a Happy Meal after hearing that, you might as well let the little sickos have it.

Back to losing weight in 2007, which is something none of us will be able to do. Perhaps instead of making sure we don’t eat, we should make sure that someone else does. Just take a portion of your food budget and give it to an organization that feeds the hungry, here and around the world. Or take one Saturday a month and volunteer at a local soup kitchen. The possibilities are endless, because who said resolutions have to be about yourself.

It pains me that I did not think this way when I was younger. There were times when my youth group would return from a summer church camp all hyped up and God-crazy, and we would focus all our passion and fire towards making our youth group the largest in town. Translation; try and get more hot girls in our youth group in hopes that one would make out with us. Had we focused more on what God was really calling us to do; there may not have been a single hungry person in our town, but who among us can stand against the teenage libido?

And sure, we have all wasted time and energy on fruitless endeavors, but that does not mean we have to this year. Let’s vow to make 2007 different, and do all we can to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, and visit the sick and imprisoned. I know I plan to do just that, right after I eat this Big Mac. Mmmm, sweet delicious dead people - I mean Big Mac.