NOWADAYS, when younger school pupils are asked what they want to be in later life, many will reply, “famous”. When pressed about what they would be famous for, there are often no answers. Just famous for being famous.

Well, it’s different from wanting to be a train driver.

I suppose that down through the centuries, human beings have regarded a select band of other human beings as role models.

Think of Joan of Arc or Alexander the Great. (It must be wonderful to be called ‘the Great’ – though you would need to have an imposing name to go along with it. Ron the Great? Nah. Doesn’t really work, does it?)

In the Middle Ages, certain priests and nuns and missionaries were the celebrities of their day.

The word ‘saint’ has an interesting history. In the New Testament, the ‘saints’ are simply the church, the people of God, Christian punters. Gradually, the usage changed. Instead of having a corporate meaning, ‘saint’ increasingly referred to individuals who exhibited a special holiness.

Miracles became associated with the saints. Soon people in the pews began to pray to individual saints, asking them to intercede with God, perhaps on behalf of a dying relative. Saints began to multiply.

In later years it was established that some people on the list of saints had never even existed, even though miraculous cures had been claimed in their name. (Wouldn’t it be weird to be sensationally cured of your haemorrhoids, then discover that the saint who you thought had done the business for you was actually fictional? God moves in mysterious ways.)

So why am I babbling on about sainthood? (Not, I hasten to add, because I myself had piles remarkably cured by the laying on of hands. No, don’t go there. I Was Not That Man!)

The month of January is a time in which many people make New Year resolutions. Sadly for some, they only last a few days.

Here is something infinitely better: it’s a prayer attributed to the 16th century Carmelite nun, St Teresa of Avila.

Let nothing disturb you,

nothing distress you;

while all things fade away,

God is unchanging.

Be patient, for with God

in your heart

nothing is lacking,

God is enough.

I think this is beautiful, in its simplicity and its profundity. Now some people will object that this prayer encourages a quietist attitude that ignores the problems of the world. In her prayer, though, Teresa isn’t attempting to lay out the whole Christian gospel in a couple of poetic stanzas. She herself was a keen reformer and a bonnie fechter. What she was doing was to point to a fundamental Christian attitude to life.

The month of January is a time in which many people make New Year resolutions. Sadly for some, they only last a few days

It is a prayer that we need to take to heart in today’s driven world. One of the great contemporary illusions is that we can control our world. Well, we can’t. The incessant over-emphasis on goals and targets is fundamentally dehumanising; it leads inevitably to fictional statistics and chronic loss of well-being, especially when accompanied by a relentless anti-Gospel workaholism.

Here’s a better way.

Recognise that our identity is a God-given gift rather than something that has to be anxiously and perpetually striven for; let God be God at the core; and with compassion and commitment face our beautiful but broken, bleeding, world. Have a good New Year.