There's something about the start of a new year that makes people resolve, "I'm going to do better this year."
And for a while we often do manage to maintain our resolutions. We are a bit more disciplined in what we do, but too often old habits such as laziness, self-indulgence, procrastination, reassert themselves. How can we overcome what the Bible calls in poetic language "the little foxes, that spoil the vines"S. of Sol. 2:15.—those habits of thought that would hinder our spiritual progress?
Perhaps we first need to recognize what spiritual progress really is. God's man, our true selfhood, is already at the peak of ever-unfolding perfection because he is the idea of perfect God. In its truly spiritual sense, then, progress is not actually a process of doing better. Rather it is spiritual man's uninterrupted, unceasing witnessing to God's perfection. Human progress symbolizes or hints at this.
