Start of a New Year and a New Life

The start of a new year is a time to see where we are going, measured against the backdrop of where we have been. Let's talk about the past and the future with an eye toward any time of transition and change in in our lives-and those moments come every day. 

 

As a new year begins and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone on before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been.The past is to be learned from but not lived in! We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us with us the best that we have experienced, and then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths  and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives.To yearn to go back to a a world that cannot be lived in now, to be perennially dissatisfied with present circumstances and have only dismal views of the future, and to miss the here and now and tomorrow because we are so trapped in there and yesterday.

 

There is something in many us of that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life-either our mistakes or the mistakes of others. Its is not good. It is not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the atonement of Christ. To be tied to earlier mistakes is the worst kind of wallowing in the past from which we are called to cease and desist. Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is that charity, the pure love of Christ. Perhaps at this beginning of a new year there is no greater requirement for us that to do as the Lord Himself said He does: " He who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord remember them no more."

 

God doesn't care nearly as much about where you have been as He does where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go. This is an important matter to consider at the start of a new year-and every day ought to be the start of a new year and a new life! Such is the wonder of faith, repentance, and the miracle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Keep your eyes on your dreams and goals. Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust, and divine love that will transform your life today, tomorrow, and forever.............Beverly