Seize Your Chance for Change

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By now we’re a few weeks into the new year and it is already starting to feel like the same old year. The news media is still talking about the same old stuff, I’m still doing the same job, I'm still going to the same old school, and I'm still interacting with the same old groups of people. In every sense of the word it is just an extension of the same old year. Most of all, I’m still the same old person I was last year. 

I had envisioned things differently though... 

I had started the year like most do; with hope for the new year. I had plans to attend the gym. I had plans to remake myself. I had plans to make this semester in school the best yet. But then, on the second day of the new year, I was hit with the flu. 

And boy did the flu give me a knock out…

All my plans for a new year were dashed as my new beginning was utterly ruined because I spent over a week in a state of vegetation, either sleeping or watching TV as I recovered. I missed my first day of school. I lost my steam to go to the gym and burn off all that holiday fat. My whole dream of being a new me seemed to have just fallen to pieces. I feel like I didn’t even get the chance to try to be a new me since the flu took my steam away. 

It was tempting to just throw in the towel, kick the can down the road even further, and wait till next year for change to come. 

It can be all too easy when you are really trying to be your best to let circumstances get the better of you. It can be all too easy to just wait and hope for a better future to just show up on my doorstep all wrapped up with my name on it. 

While the new year and new calendar is the traditional time to remake ourselves, the reality is that we shouldn’t wait for an arbitrary date to change. The truth is that the calendar doesn’t change arbitrarily, it changes because it needs to. We shouldn’t change arbitrarily either. 

We shouldn’t just make a resolution to be different simply for the sake of difference. We make resolutions to change when change is needed to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. 

If you need to make a change in your life, don’t wait for the calendar to make it and don't wait for others to make it for you. Now is the time for change! Seize your moment! 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail responding to something a white minister had told him about how King needed to be patient for civil rights to be given to African Americans. He wrote that while its been said: 

“It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." [But] Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively.

More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men [and women] willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” 

In the spirit of the New Year and in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day, seize your moment for change. Remember that changing yourself for the better doesn't just benefit yourself, it can most of all benefit those around you as well.  Don’t wait. The time is always ripe to do right. 

Ron Ullrich is
Associate Pastor of Outreach
at Generations of Grace in
Lebanon, TN