THE NEW YEAR (1977)
Wrote Benjamin Franklin, "Be at war
with your vices, at peace with your
neighbors, and let every New Year
find you a better man."
Ah, excellent advice from one of our
greatest founding fathers.
Once again, as we look back on the
old year just past, it would appear that
we were, once again, at peace with our
vices, at war with our neighbors, and
remained, for all practical purposes, the
same old, average, ordinary, mediocre
man.
Maybe that's one reason God keeps giving
us new years, new months, new days.
He knows that most of us are ever so slow
to listen, to learn or to love fully.
May this new year find each of us reaching
for, and travelling on, higher ground, so that
when we look back twelve months from now
we may say this was truly our best year.
Our spiritual hopes lie in the new year to come!
(Disclaimer: when this article was first written
in 1977 we were just beginning to wander in
the wilderness, but now in 2014 [sic}, we have been
living in the senior citizen shire for quite a few
years, and though our progress has always
been slow, we believe we are making some
progress upward and forward.
(Well, okay, sometimes, once in awhile, maybe.
Our spiritual hopes lie in the new year to come!
(Written January 1, 1978)