Here's To Doing Better!

I don't make New Year's Resolutions. I believe that if I want to make a change, I should make it with conviction and it should be worthy enough that it should be started immediately. I think if I have to put a start date on it then I have already allowed just the slightest bit of doubt to wiggle it's way into my determination and I have already unerringly set a stop date. I do however, feel that it is important to self reflect and something about starting a New Year always seems to have me doing that to a deeper degree.

I woke up this morning, hoping to take a deep breath in and to blow out an entire year of "not so great-ness". I'm gonna be the first to admit, 2016 was not my favorite year. It was hard, it was painful and it will not be missed. But after my long anticipated exhalation, I realized, there was no new euphoria for me. There was no new anticipation of better things to come. There was just....no difference. For the first time in a long time, I woke up on a day I would normally feel the need to write and I just had nothing to say. 

So I lazed around, had some coffee, read a book and finally got myself ready for church. Have you ever had someone tell you that if you're  going to pray, pray with conviction? Well let me tell you, if you're going to go to the Lord's House to worship, worship with conviction. This morning, during an other wise ordinary worship service, since I was obviously incapable of worshiping with conviction of my own merit, God decided to get my attention through the convicted worship of my dear friend, Lorrie Jameson Payne. She sang a song this morning that I have never heard, that is over a century old and that slapped me right between the eyes as to why my "grand exhale" did nothing for me. The title of the song was, "An Evening Prayer". Here are the words to perhaps one of the most profound prayer-hymns that I have ever heard:

If I have wounded any soul today,

If I have caused one foot to go astray,

If I have walked in my own willful way,

Dear Lord, forgive!

If I have uttered idle words or vain,

If I have turned aside from want or pain,

Lest I offend some other through the strain,

Dear Lord, forgive!

If I have been perverse, or hard, or cold,

If I have longed for shelter in the fold,

When Thou hast given me some fort to hold,

Dear Lord, forgive!

Forgive the sins I have confessed to Thee;

Forgive the secret sins I do not see;

O guide me, love me, and my keeper be.

Dear Lord, forgive!

Self-reflection. May 2017 be the year I do better!