A new year begins. It’s time to make resolutions—which, in church language, are really promises we make to God and ourselves, a time to renew our covenant with God. What kind of person do we want to be? How do we want to live out, or live into, our faith this year? Where do we feel God’s call on our lives? How might we more deeply love God and love neighbor? What does the creation need of us this year? What gift might we offer to the world? Who will we become?

John Glenn, the beloved American astronaut who died in December at the age of 95, once said: “My view is that to sit back and let fate play its hand out and never try to influence it at all is not the way [humankind] was meant to operate.”

Happy New Year, one and all! Let’s covenant to grow, to do, to dare, to become….the whole person God has created us to be, to the glory of God and for the sake of the Kingdom of God.