Published: December 26, 2008 10:49 pm      

Face the future and ‘pray it forward’

Inside out

Wednesday, we will stand on the threshold of a new year.

On any other month, we simply go to bed at the end of one month and wake up on the first day of the next.

The shift from December to January, however, is a benchmark experience. Many of us have a real sense of being situated at a major turning point.

Some of us make New Year’s resolutions. Some of us set goals. Still others sleep off the effects left over from the celebrations of the old year.

I guess Dec. 31 is my favorite day of the year. I spend the day going through my journal and taking note of significant experiences I’ve had during the year.

I look back at the goals I had and evaluate how I think I’ve done. From there, I set a few new goals and set my face toward the new year with new hopes and dreams. Praying it forward is how I’ve come to think of it.

It’s significant to me that the month of January is named for a two-faced god named Janus.

It’s not that Janus wasn’t loyal. He literally faced two directions at the same time.

One face was solidly focused on the past; the other directed hopefully toward the future.

Before I can move on, I have to figure out where I’m mired in the past. Then comes the hard part — making the decision to pull my feet up out of the mud and slosh forward, no matter how slowly.

Old dreams, broken relationships, memories good and bad all serve as lessons and guides. I can’t change the past. On most mistakes, I won’t get a do-over, so the best course of action is to offer all of those experiences to God, asking for His wisdom in learning from them and taking only what I need for the year ahead.

I do ask forgiveness for my failures and offer the Lord a contrite heart.

I make a list, offer my prayer, then destroy the list as a tangible way of letting the past go.

I ask for guidance in setting new goals and write them down on the front page of a new journal. They are not resolutions because those can be too rigid. They are things I think I can realistically tackle. Some relate to character issues, others to aspirations regarding career and spiritual goals. And a few, perhaps, are just plain wishful thinking. (Weight loss and a good fitness plan usually fall into that category.)

I pray for the perseverance to focus forward and to avoid being two-faced in every sense of the word.

Then I turn to the words of the Apostle Paul to “pray it forward” as I head into the new year: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3:13-14.)

May Jan. 1, 2009, be for each of you a clean slate. A chance to start again. You can’t do it and keep one foot in the past. Pick up both feet and step forward and keep moving in that direction.

Happy New Year! Learn how to pray it forward.

— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com