SINCERELY SCOTTY by Walter Scott: 2017 a New Year

2017 A New Year

Today we enter a new year, the 17th year in the 21st century.  Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?  Are you full of good intentions to keep them?  I do it to some extent every year, but remembering them and keeping them both fade long before the year is gone. But each year, we get a new start, another opportunity to try to do better than the previous year.  Someone once said, ”There are four ways to enter the New Year:

………….Some do it with a hangover

……….Some face it with horror

……….Some face it with hush

……….Others enter it with a heavenly hallelujah

How would you choose to start your new opportunity?  It would, indeed, be a wonderful world if we all could enter the New Year with a heavenly hallelujah, but sad to say, it probably won’t ever happen.  While my life has been far from perfect, it has been, for the most part, good.  I would like to believe I’ve corrected at least some of my mistakes, and that God has forgiven the others.  But what about the other three ways?

Perhaps, by entering the New Year with a hangover someone is trying to forget – forget past losses, past mistakes, past sins.  Yes, they will be able to forget for a while and drown their sorrows, but all too soon, the memories will return.  And then what?  Drown them again? And again?  And again – until they exit the year the same way they entered it?  I would hope not for, then, another soul would be lost in its own turmoil.  No they shouldn’t try to forget their past sins and mistakes, rather they should learn from them and work to correct them.  Nobody said it would be easy.

     with horror, is probably something we all have done at one time or another.  For a while as I realized I had more years behind me than I did in front of me, I would tend to think of a new year in horror.  I didn’t want to think about heaven or hell; I wanted to live on earth forever.  I enjoyed life and all the challenges and opportunities it offered.  But, I think some people enter it with horror because of the way they live.

They are carrying their mistakes and sins with them into the coming year and see little hope for their future.  They are unable to plan and work for something better; they lack vision.  In this case, I don’t know which would be a worse way to enter the New Year – with a hangover or with horror.

Some will most certainly enter the New Year with a hush, a solemn silence.  At least in this way there is hope for they are giving serious thought to their past and how to make things better for themselves and loved ones.  I would guess they are trying to figure out how to make amends for their past mistakes and sins; they are looking for God’s forgiveness, but aren’t too sure how to go about it.  It has been said that when life knocks you to your knees, you are in a good position to pray.

At the start of each year we always see a baby with a banner on defining the New Year.  We are so used to see that on TV and billboards, that most of us don’t give it a second thought.  But perhaps we should.  To me, it signifies a new beginning, a chance to correct the mistakes we made last year.  Pretend for a moment, that you were the New Year’s baby and you could introduce the coming year; how would you do it?  I don’t know for sure, but perhaps it would be something like this:

“I am the new year.  I am an unspoiled page in your book of time.  I am your next chance at the art of living.  I am your opportunity to practice what you have learned about life during the past twelve months.  All that you sought and didn’t find is hidden in me, waiting for you to search it out with more determination.  All the good that you tried for and didn’t achieve is mine to grant when you have fewer conflicting desires.  All that you dreamed but didn’t dare to do, all that you hoped but did not will, all the faith that you claimed but did not have – these slumber lightly, waiting to be awakened by the touch of a strong purpose.  I am your opportunity to renew your allegiance to Him who said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’  I am the new year.”

I don’t know who said that, but it says it all.  Have a Hallelujah New Year.

Sincerely,

Scotty

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