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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

New Year – New Hope – New Begin­ning – New Enthu­si­asm – New Res­ol­u­tion. Janu­ary, Feb­ru­ary, March, April, May, June, July, August, Septem­ber, Octo­ber, Novem­ber and Decem­ber. This is the axis around which our life rotates. Janu­ary appears to be the begin­ning of our struggle, while Decem­ber seems to be a peri­od of repose from the fatigue of the year. If you are among those who are oppor­tune to embrace this year, then you have every reas­on to thank God for such grace, because you have been gran­ted anoth­er oppor­tun­ity to con­tin­ue your just actions and to make amend­ments (col­lect­ively and indi­vidu­ally). To amend means to put in more effort, to cor­rect, to ameli­or­ate, to be will­ing to learn, to be more ser­i­ous, to be more involved in chan­ging your life and soci­ety at large, to con­trib­ute pos­it­ively to the well-being of the entire soci­ety, to be more act­ive, to be more but mod­er­ately optim­ist­ic and to be God-ori­ented. Amend­ment is an over­haul­ing process.

Gen­er­ally, it is with the inten­tion of accom­plish­ing the above that many if not all, at the begin­ning of each year (pop­ularly named New Year), make what is nor­mally called “Res­ol­u­tion” or “New Year Res­ol­u­tion.” The prob­lem with this so-called res­ol­u­tion is that many do not com­pre­hend the implic­a­tions and even make more than one thereby, declar­ing from the onset their inab­il­ity and unwill­ing­ness to live up to their decisions. Res­ol­u­tion is decision. To be resolved to…, is to decide to…. For New Year res­ol­u­tion to be real­ist­ic and cred­ible, it should not exceed one. There are some who resolve to embrace the truth; to be just; to spend more time with their fam­il­ies; to pay more atten­tion to their health; to cut their coat accord­ing their size; to quit smoking, drink­ing and way­ward­ness; to enjoy life more; to get out of debt; to learn some­thing new; to aban­don their evil way; to begin to live the way they should live; to assist oth­ers espe­cially the less priv­ileged; to be more com­mit­ted; to be more matured and respons­ible; to be more organ­ized; to be closer to God; and recently, here in Niger­ia, to avoid MMM or its equi­val­ents, etc.

There are even people who resolve not to waste their time with the past. Instead, they spend their time wor­ry­ing about the future. Not to worry about the past is good. But to pre­oc­cupy one­self with the future is even worse. Instead of mov­ing between the past and the future, one should learn to live in the present. If you can live your present well, do what you should do now, you will not have much to regret about your past and your future will be pos­it­ively guar­an­teed. Today (now), not yes­ter­day, not tomor­row, is the new begin­ning. Make adequate use of it. The present is God’s appoin­ted time for, treas­ure and pon­der this in your heart and you will under­stand its deep­er and true sig­ni­fic­ance. Decid­ing to take appro­pri­ate care of my present is also a very good res­ol­u­tion. Thanks to 2016, I now know how to live 2017. Every year is a bless­ing. To the bless­ings of 2017, I will now add that of 2017. Marvelous!

Whatever your New Year res­ol­u­tion is or might be, learn to live in the present. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gra­cious to you this year and always. The Lord look upon you kindly and grant you peace. May you be blessed both now and forever. Amen! Wish­ing you a fruit­ful and peace­ful 2017! Sha­lom!

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