Making a happier New Year
Happy New Year. This is a grand day to stop and ask yourself how you can make it a happy new year.. Circumstances and other people won’t. If it is going to be a happy new year it is up to you. You will have at least as many challenging obstacles and heart breaks as in previous years.
That won’t change. To make 2018 a happy new year the only changeable thing that can make it so is your attitude.
Resolve to identify your priorities and stick to them. If you don’t know and fulfill your priorities no one else will. Write them down. Make them few and be specific. Include time frames and your ultimate priority. Hopefully it won’t be, but assume 2018 is your last year on the late great planet earth. Question: “For what would you like to be remembered?” Distill it further, “What would you like on your tombstone?”
Resolve in 2018 to do some things you have never done and have always wanted to, but thought you could not. Doing so can be a fun challenge resulting in a sense of fulfillment. Living within your means and capacity climb your mountain, cross that barrier, and achieve your goal. Give it your best effort.
Resolve to undergo an overall attitude adjustment. Some things you can’t change, but you can change your attitude. C. S. Lewis in his inspiring work “Surprised by Joy, tells how he became aware of his ability to respond to things with delight and joy. You have it also. He realized the more he did it the more he wanted to do it. However, he also came to realize that nothing he did would result in lasting satisfaction. This led to the conclusion he must have been created for another world. He was right, we were created to find our satisfaction and fulfillment in our relationship to God.
Saint Augustine opined, “Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee.”
Resolve to manage your finances more wisely. Plan your savings, evaluate your giving, dedicate your resources to debt retirement, discipline your spending and enjoy the consequences. Money management is as important as money earning. This is not only an area in which many people can avoid a guilt complex but enjoy a refreshing freedom.
Resolve to go places and see things within your capacity. Push the envelope of your capacity. Capacity involves time, money, and health. Be content with what you can do and don’t lament what you can’t do. Complaining over what you can’t do will only take up time you could be spending planning or doing what you can do. Be specific in your plans or you will likely never carry them out. Identify your desire, designate a time, and plan your budget. Don’t delay. Don’t come to the end with an “if only” attitude.
Resolve to enhance your spiritual life. You are a spirit being inhabiting a human form. Many have a convoluted concept of self. They consider themselves to be a body inhabited by a spirit or themselves as a body only. In reality you are an awesome spirit being.
Find a place of worship where you can develop a spiritual support system of friends and get involved. Not only do you need them, they need you.
Let me press this point again. For what do you want to be remembered?
The Rev. Nelson Price is pastor-emeritus of Roswell Street Baptist Church in Marietta and a former chairman of the Shorter University board of trustees.