On Life 200 – Receive it with… – December 22, 2017

   The world is preparing to receive a new year in the next few days. Some are preparing gifts for family and friends, and some are planning to celebrate a new year. But, what about having a new year for our souls, thoughts and lives? Are we already preparing to receive the New Year in a new way?! I think I can hear you asking: What is the new you are talking about?!This year passed like the previous one, and that year will come and pass as the past years too. Someone has written: “A year has gone carrying its disappointments!!” But I wonder: who is to blame for the passing years that aimlessly and meaninglessly go by?! Therefore, if God has given you a new year, do not let your days and moments pass by monotonously like your previous years, rather make out of them a new breakthrough towards that life, which you have long dreamed and pursued in your imagination; to be a new step towards God and goodness, towards your dreams and hopes, towards your human family.

   Receive the New Year with a new and positive frame of mind that turns into a push toward the road of success in the various aspects of your life.

•    Receive it with repentance of the mistakes that you had made in the past years. There is no man without sin, but there is also a strong man who understands his faults and corrects them and another one who is weak and unable to acknowledge them so he convinces himself they do not exist, hence they grow deeper till they control him completely. Offer repentance to any behavior that does not fit with your human nature and made cruelty triumph over mercy, and evil over good in your life. You should also offer repentance to the good deeds you were capable of doing; yet you did not. Thus, your first steps at the New Year are to be positive towards God and good.

•    Receive the New Year with seeding the seeds of love and peace by openness to others and accepting their differences. It is not required of us to believe in the thoughts of others or to follow their faith, but to learn how to live together in a single homeland embracing our dreams, hopes and deeds,  hence it will be the most beautiful and elegant homeland.

•    Receive it with positive goals that increase the happiness of you and others and spread goodness on earth. Let these goals be accompanied by hard work to achieve them and good investment of the time that God gifted you with.

•    Receive the New Year with neglecting the thoughts of disappointment and frustration that will offer you a distorted image about the meaning of life. These thoughts will serve as destruction tools of the rest of your days, short or long.

   Let us all learn that we can achieve a lot in this life provided that we work hard and exert more efforts. We should learn how to be more powerful before problems and obstacles so that we overcome them with God’s help. Here I’d like to offer a role model that proved we can overcome disappointment by hard work no matter the passing of time.

To be continued…

General Bishop

Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center