Each New Day

I really do not know why the change of a year should be such a landmark. On a Friday night in December 2004 we will go to bed and wake up on a Saturday in January 2005. We've gone to bed lots of Friday nights and awakened (sure enough) on a Saturday morning. I'm sure some of us have gone to bed on Friday nights and not awakend until Sunday afternoon, but that's a subject for another post! But we will nail down that day and say to ourselves that it's a new year. This year will be different, we may say to ourselves. Maybe it will be a better year, or a worse year. Mostly it will be what we make of it and how we view it. New Year's Resolutions are mostly DOA. But real life changes can be affected over time, with God's help. As long as there is a new year, there is hope. When it looks like the church is about to squat down and die, along comes a new year and we can look up a bit and think to ourselves that perhaps this is our year. When we have let several personal problems get the best of us, we can observe the change of calendar and realize that the slate is clean. When it seeks as if we've just been running in circles, a 2004 becomes a 2005 and suddenly there are some new possibilities. Out here, hope remains. Embrace it! Truly each new day is a message from God that says, "Do your best. If it's not too good, we'll start again tomorrow."