Just got back from having breakfast overlooking La Jolla Cove. Stunning, beautiful, amazing. Always good to be there with my wonderful wife. As we ate on a cold balcony, we could see the cove swimmers below taking their last plunge for the year in icy 54 degrees water. Most of us were on the shore but these hearty souls were entering the painting. No longer spectators, but participants of life. (As long as it doesn’t kill ‘em).

Our breakfast discussion turned to New Year resolutions. What changes do we want to make for the New Year? The radio program during our drive reminded us pessimistically that most resolutions will never make it through the year. Maybe that’s because our resolutions are just a good intentions without any nuts and bolts to make it reality.

Maybe the concept of changing our lives this year is too vague. What if we go bigger and smaller with the increment of time. That is, most changes we want for this year, we want for smaller increments of time: for next month, for next week and for tomorrow. But the reverse direction is also true. Most changes we want for our year we also want for the next ten years. Yes, for the rest of our lives.

Perhaps this is a more practical tool to view the new year. If I were going to paint my life I would begin with some broad, macro layout in pencil to make sure everything fits and is in perspective. The micro comes in when I both sketch the details and then actually paint the details using fine brush strokes. Life is the same way. We with God’s help can re-create our lives like a painting.

We need to think macro and micro about our lives. That is, if I don’t want a resolution for my entire life (macro) or for tomorrow (micro) perhaps it’s not a good or practical change. But if I want the resolution for the rest of my life, then the question becomes, how will I incorporate it into my tomorrow? The micro supports the macro and visa versa, but too much is lost in a broad resolution for “next year.” Let me give you an example from my own life.

I want to be better organized in 2010. But unless this is tied to the macro (life) and the micro (day) it probably won’t happen. In fifty years it hasn’t happened. So the big picture is I want to be better organized so that I live my life with quality–in the painting. That means I want to live abundantly without clutter, worrying about what I’ve forgotten or misplaced, spending quality time with people, without missing the important moments of life. I bet I waste ten minutes a day minimum just looking for stuff hidden in my piles. A simple organized life (without being a neat-freak) is connected with abundant life, in that it organizes the details in way that I am choosing what I want rather than just reacting to disorganization and clutter. But it takes time to live. It takes attention to organization, maintenance and cleaning (micro), in order to be free to enjoy the macro.

Micro means I have to figure out how this is going to happen on a day to day basis in my schedule, otherwise it’s just a nice intention. This puts teeth to my intentions. So I plan to organize my home study on Monday morning at 9am and my office on Tues. at 10 am. I will pick up around the house every evening before I go to bed. I will review my calender every morning and evening. I will return phone calls by 4 p.m. every day. I will schedule review and reorganizing times as part of a scheduled quarterly day spiritual retreat. All these things must be scheduled or they wont happen. I think you get the idea the macro informs the micro and micro informs the macro so that a change or resolution becomes a reality instead of a good intention. Too often I’ve been like an artist who just start painting and runs out of canvas in the end. The picture doesn’t fit in the limitations of the canvas.

This is not to control me but to set me free. Actually self-control is a good thing and a fruit of the Spirit. I guess I never thought of a resolution that way–self-control.

Too often we treat the fruit of the Spirit or godly virtues as qualities that just happen to us passively without any participation on our parts. But maybe that’s the crime of today: passively waiting to be changed when God has already given us the power and grace to change. Maybe that’s the pop heresy of our day: automatism: that quality life and genuine love for others will just happen us. Maybe God’s grace gives us the ability to act and respond.

Isn’t that what responsibility means? “Able to respond, response-able.” Peter the Apostle stated boldly that “God has given us by His power everything that pertains to truly living and becoming godly” (2 Pet 1:3). Then he says, because of this truth we are to “make every effort” or respond to God’s grace and power.

So here we go into the New Year, with new hope and changes for our lives, that by God’s grace are truly possible. We must dare and plan to become new and different by God’s grace. The old has gone, the new has come. Let’s respond to His love and live inside the painting.