Welcome back.  I trust everyone enjoyed the extra day of rest or play yesterday—see, God really does answer your prayers!

But now we’re back at school, and it is 2025; a new year.  I wonder, did your parents make new year’s resolutions?  To exercise more; to be better about saving money; to read more regularly; maybe to learn a new skill or hobby?  What about you?  Any goals for the new year?

It turns out that this Friday is known as “Quitter’s Day”—the day when most people give up on their resolutions…less than two weeks into the new year.  It’s easy to think, then, that resolutions are a waste—why bother, right?

Well, G.K. Chesterton disagreed.  He said that, “The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”

Do you really want to be just the same as you were last year?  There’s nothing you even want to try to be better at?  Don’t pick on your parents for making their New Year’s resolutions, even if they give up as early as this Friday.  The surest way not to become any better is to make no resolutions at all.

Happy New Year…and have a wonderful day.