The New Year can bring a sense of optimism, a sense of starting over. Resetting the calendar can mean a reset of our lives.
A beautiful rendition of this song is performed in this link below:
The New Year can bring a sense of optimism, a sense of starting over. Resetting the calendar can mean a reset of our lives. As to the good old days, it is a time to put the past behind us and press ahead into the future - the New Year.
In the New Testament, St. Paul exhorts us, too, to put the past behind us and press ahead and look up as expressed in this advice:
Brothers and sisters,
I do not
consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.
But one
thing I do:
Forgetting
what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward
the goal to win the prize
for which
God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
This past year has had many troubling events, its share of tragedies. But 2013 has had its triumphs as well as good memories. Though there still may be dark days ahead in 2014, we have the promise that the future will be glorious in a new world where the sorrow of the past will be forgotten:
See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
Meanwhile, as we press ahead and make resolutions for 2014, may one of our New Year's resolution be to lift up one another and -
Pray for America
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Something about a new calendar ... New Year ... that gives a sense of reset. St. Paul urges to put the past behind us and press ahead for the goal.
Blessings for 2014.
I've read a couple of articles, using well-known statistics, that show that 2013 was the best year ever. As far as the United States (or America as many call the United States) goes, we have been arguing over the way the country should be run since before its inception and those arguments will continue with some people dragging their feet and other people coming out with seemingly wild ideas that eventually become part of our government and culture.
The might of the United States has been the result of three factors: plentiful natural resources, a free public education for all, and an insatiable power struggle to get ahead. After two world wars in the last century, and depletion of resources worldwide along with unsustainable population growth, a new paradigm is in order. A kinder, gentler world is evolving and the old power struggles using tremendous amounts of resources and human life is dying. The vision of the United States may be changing, but there is no need to pray for it. Besides, praying does nothing for the object prayed for, only for the one doing the praying--making them feel better.
Ron