New Year's Message

Beloved in Christ Jesus:

Many people find it useful to bring some focus to the end of one calendar year and the start of a new one. This happens in a variety of ways. Some approaches are shaped by our families of origin, some by faith traditions, some by cultural particularity. The list could go on and on. For many persons several streams come together to create the currents of how we approach the new year. There isn’t just one way to “do it”. What action or practice we choose matters far less than how we approach the new year. So below are a few snippets, with attribution, that help me approach a new year and for that matter each new day that I am given by God’s grace and mercy.

  • Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
  • Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
  • This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
  • The New Year means a fresh start, a second wind, another chance, a kind of reprieve, a divine act of grace bestowed upon the children of [mortals]. May whatever suffering we brought on ourselves or others teach us to understand life more completely, and in our understanding, love it more wisely, thus fulfilling God’s faith in us by permitting us to begin this New Year. (Howard Thurman)

Pressing toward the Goal

  • "Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. Only let us hold fast to what we have attained."(The Apostle Paul)
  • "All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me." (Jesus the Christ)

Your servant in Christ Jesus,
Gregory Vaughn Palmer

By: Bishop Gregory V. Palmer On 12/31/2011
Topics: New Year's Day
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