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New Year

Well, here we are once again ending another year and beginning a new one. So…. Here’s the question. Did you make a resolution last year? How many hours or days did you keep it? Or were you that one in ten thousand that actually made a needed change in your life? I have always been one of the people that didn’t make “New Year’s Resolutions”. Not that I don’t have LOTS of things in my life that need changed. Eat less, exercise more, stop putting things off, spend more time with family, you know how the list goes. You may have a similar one. But here’s the thing. I think I just might make a resolution this year. Not in honor of the New Year, but in honor of God.

I was noticing as we were doing our Christmas shopping that the level of rude in the world is INSANE!!! People were cutting each other off in lines and aisles and traffic. There was an eighty - something year old grandma laying on her horn in the Wal-Mart parking lot because she had to wait literally two seconds for a car to pull out of a parking place. I just looked at my husband and asked, “What is wrong with people?” It wasn’t something I got angry about, it was something I felt concerned about. I know you have heard people complaining about how we have ruined Christmas by commercializing it. Truth is, I like giving my children presents and spoiling them just a little bit because we actually don’t spoil our kids all year long and Christmas and birthdays are just about the only times we ruin them a little. I like taking the time to think about someone enough that I want to get them “just the right thing”. Focusing on people that I care about for just a little while even if it is stressful to make sure I remember everybody and everything.

I love Christmas because I love my family and friends and I think it’s a great time to show people what they mean to us because it’s the time of year we celebrate how God himself chose the perfect gift to show us what we mean to Him…. His Son….. The one gift that would have a 33 year journey to give us the ultimate “opening” when the stone was rolled away.

So back to my resolution. My resolution took place before Christmas. I resolve to be BETTER. I want to be better for my God who gave me HIS SON. My God who loves me so much that he gave me seven times seventy chances until I realized that I needed Him. My God who has shown me love every second of my existence. My God who continually shows grace and mercy and forgiveness and patience and help and healing and meets every single need in my life. I can’t earn what God has given me. I can’t ever be good enough to merit the salvation He has provided. But I can be better. I can show more of the things that God has shown me. I mean, let’s be honest, this world needs it. People need it.

Think about it. You can’t change the world, but you can change you. And if enough people make themselves better, then in a way isn’t that changing the world?