Fireworks

Well we've passed the Christmas, and survived! Imagine that. And now it's already time for the present year to end and the new one to begin. Now I know what most people think of when you say 'New Year.' They can't help but think of those sad little clay-mation (how exactly is that spelled..) movies with a big-eared baby crawling around the world while weird people that can't walk normally chase after him to save us all from not having a new year or something. At least that's what I think it was about....I don't know, but where exactly Rudolph fit in there, I will never know. It was a very confusing movie to say the least. I'm thinking maybe the animators of it could have been recovering from some spiked eggnog of sorts when they made it. It's a possibility. I do like those corny claymation movies though. It's like those dogs that are so ugly, they're cute. Because they're so corny, they're funny.

I wonder if people still try to make New Year's resolutions anymore, or is that a thing of the past? I don't keep up with them really, they don't seem to make much difference anyway. Though I have heard rumors that gyms get hundreds of customers for about a week or so after New Year's, only to have them stop coming a few days later. Such commitment I tell you;) It's a curious thing, that people make an inkling of effort to evaluate a smidgeon of their life and want to improve it, but don't usually see it through. Kudos to the ones that do. It really is a brave thing to want to change a pattern in your life and work to do it.

We're all creatures of habit in some form or another....we eat the foods that we know we'll like, we go to the places we normally like, watch the shows we normally like, listen to the music, buy the clothes, and round and round we go. But it is difficult to stop a pattern in your mind and retrain your brain to go a different way. Hopefully it's for the better, and not bad patterns that you're creating:) It definitely is hard though.

I'm sorry to say that every year when that psychadellic ball drops in New York, I am usually asleep. If I'm awake, I'm usually not interested in watching it anyway. I think when you've seen it once, you've seen the general gist and it can lose the excitement. It did for me anyway.

I wonder if it's the best way to celebrate a new year.....going to the parties, or events, or watching the special on tv.....or maybe not. We should celebrate the end of the year and coming of a new one obviously, because God has blessed us to live for another year! We've survived the wild jungle of life for 12 months, that is always something to be thankful for. But I just wonder what would be the best way to prepare ourselves for the new twists & turns ahead. Probably the same way it's best to prepare for everything.....pray. Pray about your work, your problems, your school, your friends/family, your dreams, your weaknesses, your strengths.....pray about every little thing. Who better to lead you into the unknown future, than the author of life, who carries your future?

One thing I do like about the New Year festivities, are the fireworks. I love fireworks. I think they're fascinating. And they explode. Legally. In different colors even. How cool is that? When I was little I used to wonder how people made them and how all those little light fragments could shoot off into so many different directions to make a beautiful shape. So neat to watch. Ofcourse not everywhere has fireworks for that I guess, more so for the 4th of July. But still, I love to see them:) It would be a neat thing, to think of our lives as fireworks......we're given the ingredients and tools to do something bigger in this life than we can think. Just like people put all the right ingredients into making and planning a fireworks display. We've all got different colors and shapes, and we shoot off into different directions from each other and at different times. But when we're obedient to God, he get's us ready and teaches us how to use all the things He's placed inside of us so that when that time comes.....BAM! He shoots us high into the stars, so we can burst in the pitch black sky with a magnificent array of lights. So high that it's noticeable from a long distance away and everyone can see. Then everyone is left wondering how all those icky ingredients, those trials in life, could make something so stunning. That would be neat.

So here comes the New Year! Let's pray that the Lord will take all the grimey trials we go through in life, and make us burst through them...exploding into the sky and showing everyone in the world how His light shines inside us. Happy New Year!