A fearless resolution

New Year’s Day is usually something special for me, though probably not the way it is for most folks.

As one of the few souls in this country who usually has worked on the holiday, there are no bowl games, no family get-togethers for me. I generally manage to take in the Rose Parade, though even that chance can be a bit iffy.

Despite missing the holiday features most people take for granted, I’ve always enjoyed the unusual quiet of the day. If you’ve ventured outside on New Year’s, you may have noticed it, too.

I work in a fair-sized city, and streets that are normally bustling with workers, shoppers and diners were almost completely empty yesterday — at least enough that you could have walked down the middle of the major avenues and not worried about being hit by a car.

And there was a moment — that once-a-year moment — where the air was clear and crisp, there was no sound of automobiles or people on cell phones, no bums even asking for change — and the sun just peaked over the top of the buildings and hit my face, and the only life in the heart of the city was a whisper of wind and the distant song of a melodious bird.

It was a moment of utter calm.

It’s good to have moments like that to provide a base comparison as we return to our usual hurried, noisy lives, rushing about doing our business in a perpetual state of panic.

It’s good to remember that underneath all the hullaballoo, the confused priorities and the mistaken assumptions we daily struggle with, the truth is still fundamentally simple: We are alive and free because God made us so.

All the tyrannies, all the social evils, all the lies we create to convince ourselves otherwise are ultimately just the futile flexings of people who seek power because they are afraid of their own God-given freedom — or perhaps the freedom of others.

Think of every bureaucrat or politician you’ve ever known. Every tax, every lawsuit, every protest march, every regulation, every curriculum, every guideline, every traffic ticket — even in the extreme examples of communism and other tyrannies — it’s all about taking, restricting and trying to make you forget that you are free, a child of liberty.

Why do people pursue power but out of their deep-seated need for personal safety? And what is that but an expression of fear?

As a Christian, I have an answer to the question of where that fear comes from, but even non-Christians can recognize that fear is a major motivation in our world today, and it can take forms as seemingly trivial as “speech codes” in schools or as insidious as the Al Gore acolytes’ global warming “consensus.”

I’m not normally one for resolutions, but I have one, and maybe some of you would like to add it to your list.

It’s simply, “be free.”