For all that has been, thank you. For all that is to come, yes!”, the words famously pronounced by Dag Hammarskjöld, the second UN Secretary General then, seem to me today the most appropriate at this time of the year as we end one year of our life and enter into another, hopefully a better one. Despite some natural, social and economic disasters, we can all sincerely thank our creator for all that has been. More and more mystics tell us that we would probably never understand God’s design for the universe and the inhabitants of one of its many planets — the earth.

For what we have achieved and for what has happened to us in the past year, we thank God and for the many unexpected things that are going to come our way and the new people we will meet in the newly begun year, we say — Yes. Being anxious about how life will unfold itself in the New Year is not going to be of any help but faith in God can turn our view positive even in negative circumstances.

In the Bible, Jesus narrates to his disciples a parable about a king who was going abroad. He called his stewards and handed them talents of different values giving them freedom to trade with them. On his return, while taking account from them, the two men who had worked hard what they were entrusted with, were rewarded but the one who did nothing with his talent was punished. Christianity teaches that all of us at our birth receive a certain share of potentialities from God and being faithful to God, among other things, means, that we produce fruits worthy of God’s gifts and our human dignity.

Thus while giving a final shape to the realistic but workable resolutions for the Year 2019, it would be useful to look back and see how we made use of what God had bestowed us with last year and in the previous years. Our 2019 resolutions must, however, keep God in the center of all our plans and activities. One needs to remember that without God’s help we can achieve little. Jesus told his disciples, “…Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me”.

As we launch into the New Year, it is good to recall one more famous quote of Dag Hammarskjöld: “We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours”. And as believers trying to follow a spiritual path in this material world, the sure recipe for success is to try to saturate all our plans and activities with love. Love for God and for one another.