To Reflect and Resolve

As we enter 2015, I can’t help but reflect on 1915. It was the year Alexander Graham Bell made a phone call from New York to his friend Thomas Watson in San Francisco, the first phone call across the continent. It was the year Edward Stone became the first US soldier to die in WWI. It was the year McCrae published In Flander's Fields. It was the year war rose to a terrifying new level with the first use of poison gas. It was the year the US National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was created. It was eventually renamed NASA. It was the year the planet Pluto (or is it?) was photographed for the first time. It was the year the Lusitania was sank by German submarine. 1,195 perished. It was the year Woodrow Wilson became the first President to attend a World Series game It was the year Henry Ford's assembly line manufactured the one millionth Model T. It was the year Teddy Roosevelt criticized “hyphenated” Americans. It as the year the Ku Klux Klan was chartered, and the year Jack Johnson was the first black world boxing champion. Come to think of it, the world of 1915 is glaringly similar to the world we inherit in 2015. The world of 1915 was a world at war. It was a world filled with mistrust between nations, stark political and cultural divisions at home and rising racial tensions and misunderstandings. But it was also a world brimming over with promising and innovative new technologies such as the automobile, air travel and voice communications that continue to define our lives a century later. In 2015 we are presented with another New Year and another set of resolutions. We repeatedly slide into the last week of each year resolved that things will be different once the new calendar is hung. Last year I made a resolution and this year I resolve to add to it. Last year I resolved to read through the Bible in a year. A resolution I kept. This year, I add to that by resolving to read one chapter of Proverbs a day each day of 2016. Earlier this year, my Pastor challenged our congregation to do just this, and I started to, but didn't stick with it. This year I resolve to read a chapter of Proverbs faithfully each day, and I invite you to join me. It can only make us better, wiser, and less apt to repeat the mistakes of the past, but rather to chart a new course to better understand and respond to the maddening events that swirl around us. I pray that this year my heart and mind will be filled with wisdom instead of rashness, patience instead of impulse, and forgiveness instead of bitterness. 2015 will hold it's own challenges, sure. But it can be our best year yet if we are willing to put in the effort. The history of 2015 is ours to write. At least that's the way I see it...