New Year’s Resolutions

It’s a time for resolutions, people say. Yet, so many people are tired of making promises every year, especially since we usually don’t keep them. Maybe what we need to do is change the way we look at ourselves.

Many of us feel a need to improve, change, overcome or the like. We think we’re not good enough, that we have to do hard things to make ourselves lovable. If you read Father Gregory Boyle’s book, Tattoos on the Heart, you get the message that God loves us as we are, that he always looks on us with love. Father Greg works with young people who have been imprisoned, are members of gangs, or on whom everyone has given up. He treats them like they are worth something, like diamonds in the rough. What happens is that these "riff-raffs" want to be what he thinks they are. 

Father Greg, who started Homeboy Industries to rehabilitate gang members and street people, believes that God can’t stop loving us, no matter what we do. It’s God’s nature to love all that he has made with an all-embracing love. He looks on each of us as if we are the only star in the universe.

That doesn’t mean we can’t be better or improve. It just means that God is cheering for us all the way. God believes in us when we find it hard to believe in ourselves.  Many of us have the tendency to think we are failures, that no one cares about us. But, God sees us with infinite vision, and finds beauty in each of us.

It’s okay to make resolutions but, remember: God loves us even when we fail, even if we can’t keep those resolutions. He’s our cheerleader and our coach. He will never give up on us.