The term “New Year” has something magical about it. At the first of January a brand new year lies ahead of us and for me personally it is always a bit like “starting all over”. Every year as we approach the end of the year and are about to begin a new year, we start thinking about the new year resolutions we are about to make. Every year we make a new year resolution. We have all made our New Year resolutions and hope and pray that we will do everything this new year better than in the previous years. This time, we promised ourselves to quit smoking or nail biting, to lose weight, to visit our family more often, etc.
Every year we make plans and don’t really succeed in executing them. So, the next year we plan to do them all over again. However after a couple of months into the year, we are too tired to wake up to go to the gym to do the exercises to lose weight, instead every time the alarm goes, we just switch it off and go back to sleep. So basically, we do not keep up with our resolution. Every year we make resolution only for it to be broken.
Similarly, when the Lent period starts, we want to give up something. Most of us decide to give up eating chocolates, some decide to give up social media. But we don’t really keep up to it.
As humans we are social beings and so would like to be kept in loop and also want to know everything that happens in other lives every day, so we are scrolling the social media pages of our friends and family members to make sure that we have not missed anything that has happened in their lives. We decide to keep away from these for little while, but we are broken easily due to the temptations surrounding us and sadly, most of these well-intentioned declarations and resolutions and promises are abandoned quickly. However, the fact remains that having a desire to make some sort of change indicates that we want to improve something about our lives.
The practice of resolutions or pegging goals to a particular calendar date was already well-established by the 1860's, as seen in one of Mark Twain’s letters. “Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath,” he wrote on 1 January 1863. “Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time.” (Mark Twain, Letter to Territorial Enterprise, 1 Jan 1863)
As we usher in 2023, we hope and pray that we will be in a much better place. 2022 has taught us to live with new and innovative ways with the Pandemic amongst us.
If there was one good thing 2022 taught us, we learnt to be kind and compassionate to people when we opened our houses to the refugees and families from Ukraine who needed a place to live in our country.
2022 also was tough as it taught us to survive with tough economic and financial conditions as we faced the cost of living crisis, and the energy bills rise. This taught many of us to make lifestyle changes. But this also resulted in more people going to Food banks.
The New Year is always full of resolutions. Let this one be yours from Psalms (18:2) “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold“
Put your trust in God! For where your treasure is, there you’ll find your heart. Put your trust in him! He won’t let you down. God is our hope, so put your life in his hands. May this be our resolution for the New Year.
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