My Favorite Holiday

Although there is not much activity surrounding my New Year’s Day, it is definitely my favorite holiday.  For the past few years I have spent the time leading up tot he day and then the actual New Year’s day reflecting back on the last year and looking forward to the next year.  There is nothing that stirs up more joy in me than to look at what God has done and look forward to what He may do.  

I make New Year’s goals every year as well.  I don’t call them resolutions, but to me the word “goals” sounds more like something I will work hard at and have practical steps towards.  I have resolutions that I try to live my life by, but then each year, I hammer out more concrete actions I want to take for them coming year.  So I start with an overall vision for my life, then put that into resolutions and then finally set goals for each year.  

The other thing that I just started doing for New Years is to think about a “Theme” for the year.  As I pray and look back on the year, I look at an area of my life that I would really like to focus on for the coming year.  So in 2008, my theme was “rest in God”.  So I had a hymn to kind of be my theme song during the year, which was “It is Well With My Soul”.  Then I picked a section of scripture to meditate upon as well.  To go along with my rest in God theme, I meditated upon Psalm 46 during 2008.

For 2009, I feel lead to really focus on thankfulness.  So this year, my theme song is going to be “Praise to the Lord” and my scripture I will be meditating upon is going to Psalm 138.  I am also going to add into my morning time with the Lord writing down 5 things I am thankful for every morning for the next year.

So I am really excited about 2009 getting started and seeing how God teaches me more about thankfulness in all things!