As we are at the close of the calendar year and look forward to a new year, it is good to reflect on beginning and end. Think of the year that has gone by. How did it go for you? May be you were joyful? There were days of rejoicing: a birth, a marriage, a promotion in your job, an increase of salary, a wonderful holiday you had, the new friends you made during the year, a growth in your business. Sure we need to rejoice in all these and thank God for them. But sometimes my sorrows may also come in front of me: reversals in health, wealth, missed opportunities, disappointments, new enemies, bitter quarrels, deaths in the family and days of anxieties. Let me be thankful even for these because these keep me humble and not elated but keep me grounded in harsh realities of everyday life. I am after all only a human being. I am subject to change but I need not drift with time and tide because only dead wood drift but a living being should react and be alive.
Let me examine my life and see wherein I have been remiss in the past year. Have I by my own negligence brought on these problems and difficulties that I confront today. If it is my fault let me humble myself before God and say sorry and begin a new way of life. When to begin? Today is the answer. The Psalmist in Psalm 95.7-8 says: “...O that today you would harken to his voice! Harden not your hearts...” Some people wait for the exact new year with a new year resolutions and break them soon after. Rather begin your reform now when God touches your heart. Ask him how to go about it and if you still do not get the answer, ask those who are knowledgeable, get the help that you need from the wise especially those who are spiritually motivated and not from those who may have selfish motives.
The New year that begins will it bring great joy? Would there be sorrows? Would there be problems to confront? All these questions rise in our hearts at the beginning a new year but a man of faith does not worry about these.
He tells himself like the Psalmist : “I have calmed and quieted my soul like a child quieted at its mother’s breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul” (Psalm 131.2) because my God is with me! Let others anxiously consult astrologers, palmists and the like but I will simply trust in my God and begin each day with confidence and joy and with the thought that nothing will ever happen to me without his sanction and his will is that I be always happy.
This is the simple faith to which God invites each one of us whoever we may be and wherever we may be living, whatever may be the job we hold. God wills my happiness.