Conklin-Broad Avenue-North News

January Newsletter                         

Dear friends,

Somebody pointed out that it was just yesterday when we were celebrating the start of a new century and a new millennium and now we are entering the last year of that new decade! Time has a way of marching ever onward. A Professor from seminary always said “Tempus Fidgets”, a mangling of the Latin for “time flies.”

Somehow, though, there is always that spark of optimism that comes with the beginning of a new year. If we had a rough 2008 then we celebrate the chance to start all over again - a new beginning! If we had a great 2008 then we look forward to see how wonderful the next year is going to be - even more to celebrate! We celebrate each New Year as one full of hope and promise. We make resolutions to do our part to make the New Year a good year.

Have you ever stopped to consider how it is that we celebrate the New Year? We stay up so late, well past our normal bed times, we eat a ton of food that we know isn’t good for our health and our waist line and some consume beverages in quantities which cause them to act in ways that they would never act! We begin the New Year late into the first day of the year, often times feeling the effects of the over indulgences of the night before. All of our hopes and dreams of a wonderful New Year seem cloudy and distant and far-fetched on the first day of the year!

How often do we do that? You know what I mean. We hope and pray for one thing and then we lead our lives in the opposite direction. We ask God to bless us in our endeavors but we forget to ask God what those endeavors ought to be. We ask God to change our circumstances and we continue to live as if nothing is going to change.

My prayer for all of us in this Year of Our Lord 2009 is that we will live lives consistent with our Faith: trusting God to do a good thing while seeking to change the way we live our lives in a manner consistent with that desire. In other words, let us get our act together with our Faith!

In Christ’s love,