Happy New Year!

As the page on the calendar turns, we have the opportunity to savor the past and await the future. For a brief moment, we forget our stresses and our busyness, and we imagine that the future has possibilities as yet untold, and maybe even unimagined.

As you make your resolutions, take time to appreciate the year just past. Perhaps it was not all you hoped -- maybe it had awful moments, even -- but it also had good times. Say a prayer of thanksgiving, even as you hope for better in the coming year.

May you receive what you wish in the months ahead. And may God's blessings -- expected and unexpected -- shower upon you in 2010.