We face this time every year.  You tie up the loose ends from the old year, and you then turn to the new year.  There is something bleak about this.  It usually has to do with the tying up of loose ends.  At our place that means taking down the lights outside and putting them away.  It usually means raking up the last crop of leaves which have fallen during the Christmas Drive-through in Wingfield Place.  Inside it means taking down the live tree and dragging it out to the street where it will be picked up and taken to a place where it will be mulched.  It means taking down the artificial tree and storing it and the lights and ornaments (and the lights and ornaments from the live tree) for next Christmas.  It means taking down and packing away my wife's collection of nutcrackers and santas.  Both collections are large and very valuable.  They make quite a conversation piece.  It means taking down the stockings and putting them away for another year.  This year we add another stocking for our grandson.  Looking at the stockings, however, is a melancholy thing.  I remember Christmases past when the children were at home.  Now we have only one "at home" and she really isn't.  She is away at college and is at home for brief times only.  I remember what was a happy marriage between our daughter and son-in-law turned into an ugly divorce.  I remember that Maksim, our delightful and beloved exchange student from Uzbekistan, died in September, 2004.  His stocking once hung on the mantel of the fireplace, also.  So much has passed away about which we can be melancholy.  Those memories are of a world or of worlds which no longer exist.  I have to remember that I live in the present world.

So that leads me to the new year.  Once you pack away all the stuff, you have left a blank sheet, a fresh calendar.  You have the opportunity to begin anew.  You have new New Year's Resolutions with which to begin the new year.  This is another opportunity to do things right for the new year.  Whatever the things may be--better budgeting, more exercise, exercising for the first time, losing weight, stopping smoking, beginning a daily devotional, or whatever it may be, you have a fresh start at it (at them).  That is positive and hopeful.  If you can seize on one or maybe two of your resolutions and carry them through the year, then you will have a sense of accomplishment which can be positive.  The results can be positive as well.

Of course, one of the rhythms of the Gospel is Beginning Again.  The death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord make Beginning Again possible for any one of us.  When we confess our sins, repent of our sins, turn away from the old life, and embrace the new life, we have turned from the old and entered the new realm of the Kingdom of God within our hearts.  I would wish for each of us this year, 2007, a time of true Beginning Again in every way that we need to begin again.  Let's make of this year all that it can be in our lives and in the lives of those whom we love.