•  I will lose those extra pounds.
  
•  I will join an exercise group.
  
•  I will be much more careful with money.  

• Baptism is the grandest of new beginnings for baptism is performed in connection with the removal of guilt, cleansing and the granting of a new start.  Being baptized in the church represents entering into the Christian religion as a new member. But Baptism offers a new start much more binding than any yearly list of resolutions, doesn’t it?  

Jesus message called not only for a change in hearts but demands that we work for changes in the economic, political and social structures in our world, didn't he?  Didn’t Jesus teach that we must radically change the distribution of power, goods and resources so that all people….particularly the “least among us” can live without hunger, sickness and poverty?  The New Testament is filled with this message. 

I often wonder which pastors would hear that voice from heaven declare:  “….With you I am well pleased!” 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that revered theologian that was killed by the Nazis, wrote:  “We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large heartedness… by showing a real sympathy that springs…from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer.  Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior.  The Christian is called to sympathy AND action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.“

Wouldn’t it be good for your church to set New Year resolutions?  It certainly is no secret that the world needs to change:  the rich have been getting richer, the poor.. poorer and the middle class has been disappearing in the U.S. as well as some other countries.  Haven’t you worried about the lost message of Jesus?  As Christians we should be bound to care about the poor, the sick, the maimed. 

Jesus didn’t qualify his words.  He makes his points clearly.  We, too, should call by name the demons that exist within our society.  That a child should go hungry is evil.  That the elderly should face a life of uncertainty, a lack of secure housing and food for them is evil.  That anyone should face illness and/or death through a lack of health care is evil.   Shouldn’t we as the church do something about it? 

• I just heard that one church opened its doors at night for the homeless to sleep. 
  
• Instead of potlucks, how about planning meals for the poor once a week?
  
•  Or collecting coats and boots in the cold areas of your country and distributing them to the poor? 
  
• Providing a safe place for children to go to after school is needed.
  
• There is so much to do!