I have ongoing issues with my phone, especially when I’m trying to type a message.  Usually I hit the wrong key and spell check changes the word completely and makes me look like a complete idiot to the one receiving my message.  This morning as I was getting ready to write my post for the day, I was going to title it “Happy New Year.”  I hit the R before the word new and it became Renew Year.  I decided to go with it.

When we look back on the year we’re about to close, we may think of all the promises we made to ourselves, the goals we set, the unfulfilled dreams and heartbreaks.  As we approach the beginning of a new year, we may set new goals for ourselves and think of things we want to improve on.  Maybe that diet that you started in November, which quickly got lost during Thanksgiving week and completely destroyed during Christmas, can be restarted.  Maybe the closet can be weeded out or the deep down cleaning you promised yourself you’d do, will get done.  Maybe you’ll finally get organized.

In any event, if we put a RE before NEW we have real hope for whatever we do.  We ask God to renew His presence in our lives –

To revive our zeal for Him –

To restore our relationship with Him –

To rebuild relationships with others –

To recapture the things we let go of –

To reclaim our birthright as sons and daughters of God,

To reaffirm our allegiance to getting into His Word,

To remember the cost paid for our redemption,

To relay that message to others,

To regain what has always been there for us.

As we look forward, let’s not think so much about the mistakes and blunders of 2018, but more about the possibilities that lay ahead in 2019.  They are endless when we put our faith in God, the Father, Creator of all things – His precious Son, who took on human flesh, lived and died in our place and rose again as we also will – His Holy Spirit, the light within us, planted there at our baptism, to keep us on His path.,

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death. William Cullen Bryant