Good Morning or Good Afternoon or Good Evening,
this post should take approximately five minutes to read from start to finish.
I know that I hoped for last year that this blog would reach total of either 9,500 total page views or 10,000 total page views. Overall, I was well pleased to know that this blog has reached over 9,500 total page views in December last year.
This post focuses on BYU Devotional in January 1975 and it is called "The Time for New Year's Resolutions" by Brother Sterling W. Sill. This post is part one and I would like to share with you some highlights while I was reading the Devotional.
Brother Sill has mentioned the following; "... The custom of celebrating holidays
We have a very interesting custom among us of setting aside special days on which we think about special things. We set aside the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day, and on this day we let our minds reach up and try to understand the purposes for which this day was set apart.
We set apart the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day for the same reason. Someone has said that the human mind has some of the qualities of the tendrils of a climbing vine; that is, it tends to attach itself and draw itself upward by what it is put in contact with.
Then we have some other great days on which we think about other wonderful ideas. We have Memorial Day, Easter, Pioneer Day, and the Fourth of July. We set aside the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving. On this day we try to build gratitude and appreciation into our lives. ... As we recount our blessings, we increase them. ...
Importance of the New Year
... This is a time when we make New Year’s resolutions. This is the time when we could make some determinations about the things that we have been thinking about during Christmas. Sometimes after some great event is over, we close our minds on it and forget about what we have done.
That is, after Christmas, we repack our boxes of ornaments and tinsel. The Christmas themes are taken off the radio, and we go back to doing the things that we did before. Of course, when we do that, we miss one of the greatest values of Christmas.
When we lay down the ideas that we have associated with during this high point of the year, we frequently have a corresponding recession in our lives. ... The Christmas season loses much of its constructive purpose when we repack our tinsel and forget about it. ...
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| "NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION Something that goes in one year, and out the other." |
We come now to this very important period of January, this time of a new beginning. ... Janus had one interesting peculiarity; he had two faces. With one face he looked back into the past year to discover his own mistakes and his own successes.
Then through the other face he looked up into the future to make plans for a new year and to put these great ideals into operation that had been formed during the past year.
... Now, God has a time-traveling ability, some of which he has given to the prophets as well as to us. We remember that Abraham was permitted to go back and relive the preexistence. He said, “Now the Lord has shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and that among all these there were many of the noble and great ones” (Abraham 3:22).
The Lord also put John the Revelator into a time machine and sent him up into the future to prelive the final judgement. We have been given that same ability in our dreams and imaginations. ... President McKay didn’t learn how to be the President of the Church when he was ninety or seventy or sixty.
He learned those lessons when he was five and ten and fifteen. And then in his dream he went back and relived that important experience so that he could reabsorb the original good. When he had awakened the next morning, even though now his mother had been gone for many years, it was as though he had actually had that experience with his mother during the nighttime.
Preliving the important events of our lives
But no one needs to be asleep in order to dream, and with equal benefit we can go back and relive our marriage vows. We can relive and revitalize the covenants which we made at the waters of baptism when we promised God that we would be faithful.
We can go back and relive all of those sources in the past from which we may regain strength and ambition, and we can remake our decisions about them. Or we may push the lever in the other direction and prelive the future. ...
We can also prelive our marriage vows and determine in advance the kind of people we would like to be when that great occasion arrives.
This is much better than being faced with the pressures of the moment when the occasion arises so that we clean ourselves up temporarily to get married. ... However, after the goal has been accomplished, we sometimes drop back into our past mediocrity because we are not prepared to carry through.
Sometimes we even go to college or we go on missions or we do some other great thing, but because we lack the necessary buildup to give us the follow-through and determination, it doesn’t do us the good that was intended. ... But for all of us, this month of January is a month when we look up into the new year and also plan for more effective lives. We can prelive our marriages. We can prelive our deaths.
Suppose we think occasionally of the kind of people we would like to be on that very special future occasion of our marriage, when we stand up in the house of the Lord that has been dedicated for his sacred purposes and take some very special person by the right hand and promise her or him that throughout our lifetimes we will be faithful. We will be true to those great trusts of life that have been given us as we have come into mortality."
Stay Tuned until next time.
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