Well, we’ve made it

Well, we’ve made it a few days into 2024. It seems like it is traditional to, with a laugh, ask your friends whether, by now, they are still keeping their New Year’s Resolutions. Or, worse yet, have they already given up trying?
Every year it seems like, as December nears its final days, it is expected that we should sit down and make a list of habits, activities or responses that we wish to eliminate as soon as we put up the new January calendar. As if those things that annoy us or that we must acknowledge are not good for us can only be confronted after we install the new calendar at the beginning of a whole new year
How sad. God has given us 365 days – 366 this year – in each of the years of our life. And we can only correct our course one day of each of those years?
When we read the Scriptures, we realize that our shortcomings are known by the Lord each day, throughout the year. In Psalm 86:3, David pleads, “Be merciful unto me, O Lord: for I cry unto thee daily.” David did not wait until the beginning of a new year to work on his bad habits or his sins. He not only asked for relief from those things, that he knew were wrong in his life, once a year; he prayed daily for help in removing them. So why do we accumulate what bothers us – or should bother us – before trying to deal with them all at one special time of the year? And why try to deal with them all by ourselves? David set us an example: “For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.” [Ps. 86:5]
It is early in this New Year. Perhaps you have already done battle with something that has been bothering you for a long time; something that, for a long time, you have wished could have been out of your life. It seems like the Scriptures are pointing to the successful approach: start the fight now, work on it daily, and include the Lord in the battle.
We wish you a Happy, Healthy 2024. We pray you are succeeding in your self-improvement resolutions. All of us need to keep working at it – our goal is perfection. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urged, “Be perfect, … as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Matt. 5:48} We’ll keep trying, but; so far, we only know of One who is Perfect. Virginia
It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23