My reflection today is from Fresh Bread:
“ I am not so certain that we always enter into the new year with our focus on the whiteness, the freshness, the brand new beginnings in our heart. I tend to believe that we let our glance rest a little too long on all those areas of our lives where we feel we have failed or not given our best. Why else would we still make resolutions based on what has gone before? We look into the past year and feel guilty or discouraged when we realize that we are still struggling with our failures and our weaknesses, those age old shadows, that we seem to overcome, only to discover that they still pursue us relentlessly deep inside.
It can be beneficial to glance backward over the past year if we do not stay there and center on our incompleteness. As long as we do not base all our vision of the new year on that backward glance, we can learn from what we see. But then we must move on. January is such a good time to deliberately set our steps forward, to begin again, to give ourselves over to the promises of the future. January is the month when we look, really look, at our life‘s journey and rejoice over the gift of another year given to us. The perception of life that enables us to walk into a new year with this hope and confidence is the perception that we can begin anew, that we are constantly being offered fresh beginnings by our God.” – Joyce Rupp
God is giving us the time to begin anew.
This past year has taught us what the important things are in our lives.
Let us ask God to give us this new year with hope and vision. 
