Opinion

As you know, 2021 was full of challenges. We were still feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic when supply chains shut down and inflation heated up. So, if you’re like many people, you might not be sorry to see the year come to a close. But now it’s time to look ahead to a brighter 2022. And on a personal level, you may want to set some New Year’s resolutions. You might resolve to improve your health and diet, and possibly learn some new skills, but why not make some financial resolutions, too?

How wonderful it is to know that the gospel of Jesus Christ was not contrived in the thoughts of mere mortal man. If it were so, then we would be hopelessly lost and the remedy for our evil thoughts would only become conjectures that would lead to greater corruption. This is the result of all who reject Biblical authority today, for the thoughts of man are continually changing. Apart from the unchangeable truth of God’s living word, man’s wisdom concerning God is built upon the principles of his own imagination. His conscience is continually being conditioned by what he sees and hears daily and he becomes his own god and does what seems right in his own eyes. He takes the moral precepts that are inscribed upon his mind as an image bearer of God and lowers them to justify his own actions and to satisfy his own immoral thoughts. Though eternity is woven in the fabric of his nature and he sees all of the hidden attributes of God in all of creation he suppresses that truth. He allows the fallen passion, that has been perverted by sin, to become the driving force of his own will and the temple of His body becomes the playground of wickedness and the dwelling of demons.

These days I feel a little as if I’m grieving for a younger me. I look in the mirror, and I contend with the greying hair and the imperfections that come with age, always shocked to remember that my neckline sags in the way of grandmothers and old great aunts. I have come to middle age, and I must say that it’s a difficult stop on this journey of being a woman. I’m not quite old enough to have earned the bags under my eyes or the ways that a red-head’s delicate porcelain skin seems prematurely worn; nor am I young enough to be roundcheeked and metabolically balanced. I’m in the no-man’s land of aging. The middle years, where any guess about my age is likely to be wrong one way or the other, depending on ridiculous things like how much water I’ve been drinking or how much I spent on my current anti-aging moisturizer.