The New Year is usually an exciting time. It provides a convenient point for us to both look back into the past and forward into the future and reflect on where we’ve been and where we are headed.
Often we spend our time making lists of things we’d like to do – “resolutions” we hope to keep in the next year.
Resolved: I will wake up early and accomplish something this year.
The problem, of course, is that by March most of us can’t remember what our resolutions were, much less how well we actually kept them. Many people who have lengthy lists of resolutions are discouraged by their continual failure to ever make it a full year and being able to say they actually did what they said they were going to do at the beginning.
Perhaps part of the problem is that a year is just too long. The reality is that each day is a new beginning. We wake up each day with the ability to look both to yesterday and tomorrow – to learn from our mistakes and remain hopeful about our future – and face the day with renewed courage and commitment. Each day we rise is new and beautiful, its canvas blank and ready for the brush we apply to it. We can view life as a series of evil days where everything is going downhill, or we can seek each day to paint beauty into the world around us.
As we enter into a new year, a year full of struggles, challenges, dreams and disappointments, my prayer is that we will see each day as a new beginning – that we will resolve each day to start anew on our commitment, taking light into a dark place.