As a new year approaches, our heart may yearn for our life to sing a new song, one that is better in some way—kinder, healthier, more productive, less worry, more freedom. And down deep within ourselves, perhaps we are struggling to overcome some seemingly ingrained habit, character trait, or chronic affliction that we’ve tried many times, with little or no success, to free ourselves from. Human will has proved to be a fruitless way of going forward, and New Year’s resolutions have come and gone with nothing to show for them.
But a deeper look into the teachings of Christ Jesus gives reason for hope. He taught and proved that the tender love of God is here to bring forth a magnificent renewal within us. I’m thinking, for example, of an account in the Gospel of Mark (see 1:21–27). Jesus cast “an unclean spirit” out of a man. At that time it was believed that there were evil spirits that could enter a person and control him or her. Today, when the story is read, it is generally assumed that the man was suffering from some kind of insanity. So, if Jesus could, through the authority of God’s benevolent will, cure that man, what might we learn from this story about overcoming those problems that have been so stubbornly hanging on to us?
Jesus had been teaching in the synagogue while that man was present, and the authority with which Jesus spoke astonished the people. In fact, the “unclean spirit,” or spirits, claiming possession of that man began a loud protest: “Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.” Well, yes, Jesus had come to destroy that out-of-control mental state in order to free the man from its domination. Jesus stepped right up to the challenge and rebuked it, saying, “Hold thy peace, and come out of him.” And yes, stubborn resistance made one last desperate effort to hold on to the man, but then, after crying out “with a loud voice,” it came under the authority of the Christ, and “came out of him.” End of story; the man was free.
