What is the mystique of New Year's Day? Why do we mark this as the time we will finally be more healthy, giving, loving, spiritual, whatever? If tomorrow we will essentially be the same biologically, financially, intellectually, etc, why do we put so much attention on one specific day that is nothing more than the turning of a calendar page?
One word. Hope.
We hope that we can change. We hope that things will get better. We hope for the life we have not yet encountered.
I enter this year full of hope on so many fronts. Yes, I want to see change in the normal, almost cliched areas. I want to lose weight and get healthy. Finally get a better grip on the budget instead of it gripping us. Be more loving to my family. Have more regular "quiet time" with God.
But there are also some specific things I am praying for this year. I want to not just get pregnant but STAY pregnant long enough to deliver a healthy baby. I want to find more ways to answer God's call on my life to minister through creativity. I want to encounter God more and let others encounter Him through me.
He is the only way we made it through 2008. And it's to Him I look with hope for the coming year.
