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If you've given up making good resolutions for New Year because they never last past mid-January, you might relate to Saul's story.
Saul set himself high standards. He drove himself hard and expected the best of himself and of everyone else. He didn't do failure or weakness.
He couldn't stand Christians. They seemed to expect God to make allowances for them, however often they failed, for the sake of someone called Jesus Christ. It wasn't Saul's style to rely on someone else to achieve his goals for him.
The trouble was, when it came to moral goodness, all his effort to be perfect didn't seem to work. It made him stressed and wound-up.
He didn't see it as his fault, when people got nervous around him. He thought they were weak.
Finally, full of contempt for human weakness and for human beings, Saul fell off his high horse. He fell so hard that he shocked himself.
Everyone kept a safe distance. If he'd been hard to live with when he saw himself as better than everyone else, how aggressive would he be, humiliated?
When someone finally came to help him get back his life, it was one of those Christians Saul had never liked. And he didn't do much for Saul - only prayed.
But something happened.
Saul opened his eyes and saw someone like himself - flawed, shaky and chasing up blind alleys some of the time - but someone who knew he was loved by God and saved, not by his good resolutions or his perfect record, but by the goodness and kindness of Jesus Christ.
Happy New Year.
(First published in local newspaper
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