New Year's resolutions are arguably the opposite of devotion. We say we're going to change our lives in someway, that we're going to take ourselves in hand and do this thing, and it lasts for... how long?

Devotion, on the other hand, implies a consistent, unfaltering, attention to the thing we are devoted to.

This Sunday we will look at something of which it was said that the early Christians devoted themselves to it. That something was prayer.

Why would they do that? And why should we, given there are a thousand other things asking for your devotion in the year ahead?