A New Start

by J. Ellsworth Kalas

If I had lived in the eighteenth century, I would have devoted myself to gaining three friends: John and Charles Wesley and Samuel Johnson. Especially Samuel Johnson.

That may sound like heresy in light of my heart-commitment to Methodism. Perhaps I should put it this way: I would go to hear John Wesley preach, I would join Charles Wesley for a long round of hymn singing, and then I’d go to a pub with Samuel Johnson for a ploughman’s plate and a pot of tea and time to talk.

Samuel Johnson could talk on any subject and fascinate me, because he knew how to cast a sentence with wit and perception; Boswell’s great biography of Johnson is full proof of that. But I’d want especially to talk with Johnson about his faith and his lifelong pursuit of better Christian living.

Johnson repented constantly of his shortcomings, especially his poor use of time. For him, each birthday was a chance to start again, with new resolve. So, too, with each New Year’s Day, which he saw as everybody’s birthday, a time for beginning anew. And sometimes Easter, or the anniversary of his wife Tetty’s death.

I am currently reading -- with great profit! -- many of Johnson’s prayers and excerpts from his journal. On his 55^th birthday he wrote, “I have now spent fifty-five years in resolving, having from the earliest time almost that I can remember been forming schemes of a better life. I have done nothing; the need of doing therefore is pressing, since the time of doing is short.” Mind you, at this point he was known throughout the English speaking world as the editor of the first dictionary of the English language, and was almost surely the most respected writer of his generation. But he wasn’t satisfied with the state of his soul.

So on that birthday he made a list of goals, including: “To study the Scriptures. I hope in the original Languages. Six hundred and forty verses every Sunday will nearly comprise the Scriptures in a year. To read good books. To study Theology. To drive out vain scruples. To treasure in my mind passages for recollection. To rise early. Not later than six if I can, I hope sooner, but as soon as I can. To take care of my health, by such means as I have designed, as washing, etc. To set down at night some plans for the morrow.” Some six months later, at Easter, as he prepared to “partake of the Blessed Sacrament,” he mourned that he had fallen so far short of his previous prayers.

I tell you this because we are at the doorway of another year, which is a highly appropriate time to repent of any poor performance in the year just ending and to search our hearts and our patterns of life to see how we might do better in 2012. Samuel Johnson knew the value of time, and was painfully conscious that he was inclined to waste it. I submit that it would be good for both you and me to take inventory of how we’ve been using our time, then follow Dr. Johnson in making a list of how we would like to improve in the year to come -- especially, his rule to “set down at night some plans for the morrow.” If we don’t, distractions and minutiae will set them for us.

And here’s to a new start!