New Year’s Resolutions/Good Habits for Life Enhancement
- Redeem some relationship that is strained or broken. This will take some weight off your shoulders.
- Set in place a reasonable work schedule with space for playing hooky or chilling by the fireplace. Try to find a balance between discipline/principle, paranoia/buffer and risk/creativity.
- Schedule more time with friends. Cultivate new life-giving relationships. Hold a baby.
- Get outside in the fresh air and seek mobility. The gym is a good option in foul weather.
- Spend regular time with God in prayer and Scripture meditation. Bible study is also fun with friends. Worship also gives perspective on your struggles.
- Help someone in some way (as realistic) each week. This makes you a stronger self and builds community–builds a good feedback loop.
- Develop a framework for growth, impact and personal empowerment–one that will move your life forward.
- Assess your giftedness, assets and calling. Build out from your strengths and successes. What caused that success? How can you make it even better?
- Call out the things that cause you fear or make you feel weak, and face them bravely with patience, grace and integrity. Get help as needed. Prayer can give you perspective on your negative/dysfunctional fears.
- Seek out someone to mentor you in something new, keeping that creative edge alive. Have a wonderful 2023.
This poem from Dietrich Bonhoeffer is in Lutheran, Catholic and Mennonite hymn books in Germany. He expressed from prison at the turn of 1944 a hope that we also need looking into 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN7dGz6NH5M
Finally here is a great talk to start 2023 by UK Bishop N.T. Wright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukyNU51OcnA
A Big Welcome to New UBC Postgrad Students!
“By the Powers of Good” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
With every power for good to stay and guide me,
Comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I’ll live these days with you in thought beside me,
And pass, with you, into the coming year.
The old year still torments our hearts, unhastening;
The long days of sorrow still endure;
Father, grant to the souls thou hast been chastening
That thou hast promised, the healing and the cure.
Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
Even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,
We will not falter, thankfully receiving
All that is given by thy loving hand.
But should it be thy will once more to release us
To life’s enjoyment and its good sunshine,
That which we’ve learned from sorrow shall increase us,
And all our life be dedicate to thine.
Today, let candles shed their radiant greetings;
Lo, on our darkness are they not thy light
Leading us, haply, to our longed-for meeting?
Thou canst illumine even our darkest night.
When now the silence deepens for our hearkening,
Grant we may hear thy children’s voices raise
From all the unseen world around us darkening
Their universal paean, in thy praise.
While all the powers of good aid and attend us,
Boldly, we’ll face the future, come what may.
At even and at morn God will befriend us,
And oh, most surely on each newborn day!
ubcgcu 
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