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- Spare it this year also⏳.
Happy New Year🎉, and greetings!
Hope your festive season was awesome. Mine was just like any other weeks/days.
This very first issue of 2024, I want to talk about a sermon I heard a couple of years back, probably while I was still in high school. It was delivered on the morning of one the New Year services I attended back then, and the Biblical verses have stuck with me ever since, but only felt realest this year.
For context, the verses go:
Then said he [owner of the vineyard] unto the dresser of his vineyard, “Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?”
And he [dresser of the vineyard] answering said unto him, “Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”
Beautiful parable and even better how the preacher of the day elaborated it. But since this is not a spiritual writing, I’m gonna relate it a bit differently.
Everybody’s excited and hopeful for the New Year, and have all these goals and plans and aspirations for the new year; which ain’t bad at all. But as one who has been constantly on the world-wide lie that new year brings a changed version of a person, I am very skeptical of the idea that a certain date on the calendar changes your life, either better or worse.
Most things, especially habits and character, I believe, happen gradually: over time, not overnight (literally). And so the notion that a new year brings a new person, especially me, has completely gone off my mind.
That said, I realized my “spare-me-this-year-also” year on last year October. (PS: I started writing this in Oct 2023). So basically even as the calendar year turns over to a new year, I am moving on from life choices I made in October and subsequent months to currently. I had decided my grace period for “joking” in life had gone on for too long. There was literally no need to cross over to every year with hopes of changing my life yet come mid year I am the same miserable shell of a person just roaming the face of earth. Heck, even after hearing such a breathtaking sermon I still couldn’t change my life not only spiritually but in life as a whole.
But ever since October my walk-to-Emmaus moment happened and I realized I have but one year (at most) to make my life either turn for the absolute best or for the absolute worst. Everything I’ve ever been required to do or everything I’m supposed to do, now I will try my absolute best to do, coz it is what is right, to me. Everything I’ve ever wanted to do, now I will go on with a brave step believing that whatever happens I’ll learn how to deal with it and embrace it. It is a ‘year’ that I’ve decided what needs to be done needs to be done. And the inward works that I put in will eventually show fruit outwardly. And like the parabolic fig tree, when the owner comes to pluck a fruit, he should find plenty to pick, and the dresser be delighted to have planted me. The only work then should be to prune the still lingering bad traits and habits.
I am not one to believe in the ‘new year, new changes’ stuff ever since I realized nothing has changed in me for the better since about 7 years ago. And so I am glad I decided now to fix my life how it is supposed to be, not waiting for any specific date or time or season. And I cannot trace it to any particular date in October, coz I am sure it has been a series of days and nights that I was just not satisfied with how I was living my life. And sure to it, I have been seeing flickers of fruits here and there; still a whole lot of work to be done though.
And so my kind message to anyone out there this hopeful start of the year, you might want to consider it your final year of chance at existence, and not ‘just living’. It might be your last year of producing good fruits, after three plus years of the owner not finding any use of planting you as the vine. With this mindset, I’ve taken lots of chances since last quarter of last year, knowing this year is my last probational year to be ‘me’.
Whatever you opted for this year, go for it. For real this time!
PS: If you have a few seconds to spare, please hit the <reply> button and let me know what you thought of this email. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it and what could be improved. It also reminds me that there’s another person reading it on the other end of my screen😅. Thanks.
Have a great 2024!
Reagan.