Daily Resolutions

I am going to be honest. I don't do New Year's resolutions. One good reason is I won't even remember at the end of 2017 what my 2017 resolutions were. In a sense, giving yourself a goal for a whole year is almost setting yourself up to fail. You will grow weary of attempting it and will most likely give up before it's March.

A much better way of making goals is short-term. Long-term goals change. When you look back on an entire year, things have changed drastically from the beginning of the year. Making long-term goals tends to be in the abstract sense because you have to be open to changing them. Thus the short-term goal idea--in daily goals.

I found this great prayer (from a calendar of Bishop John H. Vincent Copyright 1909):

A Resolve for Every Morning of the New Year

"I will try this day to live a simple and serene life, repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity, and self-seeking, 

cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity and the habit of holy silence, 

exercising economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation,

diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust, and a childlike trust in God."

This prayer reminds us that we need to make resolutions each day, according to what circumstances and situations present themselves. For instance, one week we may need to work on patience, but another in charity. Our daily goal of embracing God's will for us naturally will transmit to our entire lives and our long term goal of the holiness of a lifetime. It's taking one day at a time and not thinking too hard about tomorrow that will dispose us to be ready for the entire year ahead of us. 

So welcome the New Year with the words of Anne of Green Gables, "Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it?"