Chapter 35
New Year Opportunities
1. The very word new gives a welcome, because there is something in the make-up of mankind that craves the freshness that the word suggests. So why not give the word new a place every day? Why not on first awaking remind ourselves that this is a fresh new day, full of opportunities and fragrant with possibilities? God did not endow us with brain, soul, and spirit only to have us get entangled in the web of habit.
2. The restrictions of yesterday have no power to overshadow our lives today, when we realize that we are in the eternal now. Let us begin our day with newness of thought and courage. Let us at the beginning of the new year throw tire doors of our hearts and homes open to the new. The “newing” process comes first in mind. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
3. Carry this into every detail of your life. Begin with the years and scatter them first. See yourself new, fresh, and full of vigor. Then by the same process of transforming change everything you have to deal with daily. That which was irksome and stale now takes on a new, fresh delight.
4. The children of the homes are the ones who really understand the law of the new. By the touch of their untainted imagination the simplest things are transformed into the beautiful and marvelous. If we would consider this we would see that it is not the things themselves, but the thought back of them that gives them significance. The poet says, “Thou seest no beauty save thou make it first.”
5. Beauty and appreciation are inborn, and so are all the qualities that make for the transformation in the outer world. Emerson teaches that those who have capacity to appreciate beautiful things have more enduring title to them than those who hold material ownership of them.
6. With this clue, who need lack possessions? The new thing to do is to let the Seer within look with unblurred vision. Michelangelo beheld an angel where the outer eyes saw only a block of marble, and with the cunning of chisel and mallet he brought into manifestation what his inner vision had created.
7. Looking with this inner sight we behold the angel of the new, where to the outer eyes there is mere common condition, or common experience, and the new comes forth into manifestation through the telling strokes of our thought and word.
8. Do you want to make new every day of the year? Have you looked on the dark side? Find the silver lining of your own ideals. Have you the habit of holding grievances? Look within and see the joy tucked away in the remote corners of your heart, and the world without will grow roseate to your charmed vision.
9. Go step by step through the old habits of mind and bring forth die glory of their hidden side. You will find angels of overlooked opportunities coming forth from the commonest demands of everyday life.
10. o ready is this glory to come into your life that you need only turn your face upon it to behold the angel of the new. Your home and life and all therein will be transformed through renewed purpose, thought, and word.
