College Life: A Time for Resolutions
January 1.
A time when resolutions are made. A time of hope that we will actually see some changes made in our lives. Two or three months later, the hope is dead. The resolutions have been broken.
Most of us are resolution breakers. Yet we pledge year after year to effect major changes in our lives. December has become a month of self-evaluation, a time to examine life and decide what needs to go (maybe ten or fifteen pounds) and what needs to change.
It is some consolation that by making resolutions we are at least admitting our need to change for the better.
Why, though, has resolution making been reserved for one time of the year?
Indeed, this practice probably does more harm than good, putting a sort of jinx on any desired change.
If we are really bent on improving – whether it is to be healthier, more productive, more kind and generous or whatever – then we should take resolutions more seriously.
History has been gracious to leave us the example of a Jonathan Edwards, a man revered for his wisdom, insight, and literary contributions. Encyclopedia Britannica refers to Edwards as the “greatest theologian and philosopher of British American Puritanism….”
Yet it was not out of nothing that this great thinker emerged. Underlying his success was a strict self-discipline rooted in a series of personal vows.
“The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards” are an inspiring collection of commitments that a young Edwards made to himself and to his God. Suffice it to say, he went far beyond the New Year’s idea.
Between 1722-1723, when he was around 20 years old, Edwards wrote 70 resolutions which he promised to read over every week.
Of these 70, two in particular were inspiring in my own resolution making:
- Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can (resolution #5)
- Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live (resolution #6)
Apparently Edwards kept his resolutions.
In his 55 years on earth he left an incredible legacy. In his own day, he became the second president of Princeton University (then the College of New Jersey), and nearly 300 years later he is still widely read by both theological and secular scholars and by laymen.
What would be the result of living with such determination?
Most will never know. How many people do you know who live with all their might? How many people do you know who instead spend inordinate amounts of time surfing the web, talking on the phone, or watching TV?
Surely even in Edwards’ day there were distractions that kept most people rather unproductive.
But Edwards broke away from the majority and lived a full life by:
- making a long list of well-thought out resolutions;
- holding himself accountable on a weekly basis.
I am not going to try and be Jonathan Edwards. But I will try to follow him on that one resolution “to live with all my might as long as I do live.”
Any joiners? There’s no need to wait until next January to make your decision; Edwards made it in July. It would be great to look back on life, even if it should end at 55, and know that you lived well.
It would be an injustice, however, to be vague about the reason for Edwards’ resolutions.
His opening sentence reads: “Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.”
It will be hard for anyone to live a life of commitment and resolve without a greater, more ultimate purpose than the present age.
Thus, Edwards’ ‘live hard’ mentality was not simply ‘carpe diem’ – seize the day. He looked at the day at hand and said ‘seize the day in light of the eternal future.’
This is the deeper issue that we should all come to grapple with at some point, if we are not too distracted.