DO YOU HAVE NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS?

Well friends,  Christmas is gone for another year.  My hope is yours was a great celebration with family and friends.  I know mine was and I thank God for another year of life.  But now we ask ourselves.... "What now?"    Sometimes it's hard to slow down after all the excitement we've just come through.  I believe that's why we have the New Year so soon after Christmas.  New years is different things to different people.  Some look at it as a time to party.  Some of us love to shoot off fireworks.   To some it is all about football and the bowl games and to some it is again about eating.  Have you every noticed we Americans are always able to make eating the center of all celebrations?  And no!!!!!!!  this isn't another post about eating or food.  Another thing we think of when we think of the New Year is resolutions.  Now I have made plenty of those in the past and again this year I will think of something to change about me in order  to make my life better or to make me a better person.  Will I keep my resolutions?  I have no idea but I will promise to keep at least some of them.  Some of them you say....Yes some of them....There will be more than one.

Every year I do an art show in Brookhaven which is a community in Atlanta.  This year as I was sitting up my birdhouses,  a young lady that is also a vendor came up to my tent.  She looked familiar to me but I couldn't quite place her.  This happens often and usually after we talk for a few minutes I can remember them.  That was the case with this lady.  She told me she lived just south of Chattanooga Tennessee and that the year before she had bought one of my birdhouses.  She said she had bought a birdhouse from me that looked like a traffic light and she wanted to see if I had another like it.  Most of my houses are one of a kind but the traffic light is one of the few I duplicate because I sell so many of them.  As I was hanging the birdhouse from the top of the tent,  she looked up at the traffic light and the biggest smile came to her face.  As she looked up at the traffic light birdhouse she said  "I want to tell you a story about the house I bought from you."   As she went on she told of taking the birdhouse home.  She told of hanging it in a tree in her front yard and about birds nesting in it.  She told me about how all her neighbors and friends just loved the house and about the wonderful comments she had gotten about it.  She then told me about the tragedy that had struck her family.  She told me about the tornadoes that had come through on April 27th.  How her house was gone.  All of her belongings were gone.  Her trees were all broken and pulled up by the roots.  Then that smile came to her face again and she said  "All the trees but one."  One tree was left in her front yard.  And on that tree,  still hanging where she and her husband had placed it was the traffic light birdhouse.  She said for some reason that birdhouse gave her assurance that all would be well.

This young lady didn't look back at the bad things that had happened.  She looked forward.  On that day,  April 27, 2011,  she made a resolution to go forward.  I'm sure she has had disappointments since then and failures since that day but I am also sure she is still going forward with that smile on her face.  As I get ready for the New Year I too resolve to look forward.  I also will have disappointments and failures but I will put a smile on my face and continue to put one foot in front of the other. I will do as the old saying goes,  I will  "keep on keepin on."   I will keep on because MY GOD is in control.

So you ask,  "What are some of my resolutions?"  

Well for one, On January 2,  2012 I will begin training for the Peachtree Road Race and on July 4th for the first time in my life I will participate in this event.  No ,  I won't run it but I will walk it and I will proudly wear my T shirt.

Number two:  And this will be the hardest,  Just after the first of the year,  I will begin writing a book.  I have had many of you ask me about doing this or tell me I should write a book but in the past I have always declined...Last week I asked myself why not do it.  I've always wanted to write a book but have felt I didn't have the talent.  I was afraid I would fail.  Then I thought about a story I read many years ago about a man that had always wanted to be a lawyer but had always found an excuse not to go back to school.  The man was fifty years old and was talking to his daughter about this dream he had always had, but he told her..... "It will probably take me 5 or 6 years to get my Law Degree.  By then I will be 55 or even maybe 56."
To this his daughter replied...."And if you don't go back to school, won't  you will still be 55 or 56 years old in 5 or 6 years?"
So what are my expectations of my book?  What will make it a success?  Are we talking getting it published?  Are we talking copies sold?  None of the above .  I finally figured out that to be successful at writing a book,  all you have to do is write it.

Number three:  I will get back to reading my Bible.  For years I have studied what others say about God's word.  I have read commentary after commentary and article after article about what the Bible says.  Peggy once told me I had more books than some libraries.  I have even watched TV programs about God and the creation of the earth.  I have listened to politicians talk about abortion and other things of morality for years.  One of the first things I believed about being a Christian was the Doctrine of Priesthood of the Believer.  The belief that I could go to God through Jesus without any other mediator and that God would revel to me all I needed to know through His word.  Don't get me wrong.  I believe these commentaries and articles are good but I need to get back to the basics....Back to God's word.  and why would I want to study Gods Word more you ask?

 Philippians 3:10 (The Amplified): “For my determined purpose is that I may know Him that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly, and that I may in that same way come to know the power out flowing from His resurrection which it exerts over believers and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed in spirit into His likeness even to His death, in the hope.”

I pray this will be your purpose also in the coming year.
HAPPY NEW YEAR AND GOD BLESS