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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: New Year (05/09/05)
The prospect of a New Year always finds me with conflicting sentiments whether I’m anticipating the new calendar year or my birthday, the New Year in my life. It is important to me to celebrate and embrace inevitable change; yet transition can be a source of drudgery that dampens my joy. That’s because effectively changing, which is changing for the best, takes effort. And I, like most, prefer to set my sail to the wind rather than row the boat of life.

Each time a year ends and begins I have to make choices that will affect me emotionally and spiritually, decisions that will impact not only myself but each person in my sphere of influence as well. I have to decide if I’m going to continue to interact with others the way I did in the previous year. I have to adjust my budget and organize my desk, clean my closet and schedule my annual physical. The onset of a new year is the time I decide if I really need all the stuff I’ve accumulated or if I’m going to bless someone else with the things that are in excellent condition but have become surplus to me. Embarking on another year’s journey means I have to renew my commitments and vows. I have to demonstrate my integrity in tangible ways. All of that is rather laborious and often exhaust my physical and mental energy.

Still, I invite the New Year. The past can’t be erased. Whatever successes or failures I incurred in the previous year are what they are, period. Regardless which outweighs the other, the good versus the bad, with excitement, I charge into the next year. I wrap my being around the present like a nurturing mother holds her newborn babe because I view the present as a chance to lay a new foundation. I can say yes that’s who I was last year, “but God…” My failures are swept away by my true repentance and my successes are but testaments to His goodness. Like Paul, the Apostle, I choose to forget those things that are behind – good, bad or indifferent – and “press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14 NKJV)

True, starting another year can be toil. Change, transition and adjustments tax the mind, spirit and body. Yet, in the end, I welcome the opportunity to begin again. Again.
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Dixie Phillips
05/16/05
Loved the last line... I welcome the opportunity to begin again. Again! Great devotional piece.
Deborah Porter 
05/24/05
Hello Pamela. I'm just popping in very quickly to encourage you and let you know that your entry made it into the semi-finals for the New Year Challenge. It was such a competitive week with such a high standard of entries, that anyone who made it into the semi-finals really should consider themselves as a winner. Love, Deb (Challenge Coordinator)