Changing Our Tomorrows
Changing Our Tomorrows
By Kathy Penrod
For my eighth birthday, my parents took me to an actual movie theater where I was able to watch the musical, Annie. I was smitten. I loved the story. I loved the characters. And, of course, I loved the music. For years after, I would sing the soundtrack in my head and with my friends. I am pretty sure that every time I felt my chores were unfairly assigned, I would sing “It’s a Hard Knock Life.”
The one song that has stuck with me for the last 40 plus years is “Tomorrow.” My mom was fond of saying, “Tomorrow is another day.” At which point, in my head, the music would cue and I would start singing to myself, “The sun will come out tomorrow!”
I love the message of that song. I love that tomorrow is always new and fresh.
Now we have a new year. A new tomorrow. It’s a blank slate. Completely fresh. We can make of it whatever we want. We get to decide how we will respond to this new year.
Our new tomorrows begin with the changes we make today. So, what will be your changes? This is the question on everybody’s mind with the advent of a new year. Would you change your health, your social standing, your relationship with Christ?
I think it is appropriate that Christmas precedes the New Year. Amid all the tinsel and greeting cards lies the Reason everyone is celebrating. The birth of our Savior marked a new beginning for the entire world. A new tomorrow, so to speak.
With His little newborn cry, lives were changed and people could hope. With His life, He showed us how to live with devotion to the Father, compassion for the sinner and tenderness for the downtrodden. With His atoning sacrifice and subsequent death, He paid for all our sins and sorrows. And by so doing, He can now show us the way to a new start. He knows how to help us to a brighter tomorrow.
Change, while often necessary, isn’t always easy. We get entrenched into our routines and habits, making it difficult to produce different results. I know, for me, when I look at all the things I want to change, I can get overwhelmed. But the way to approach change isn’t an all or nothing attitude. As the old saying goes, “The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.” The same is true with change. When we want to make a difference in our lives, we need to take it one little piece at a time. Making small improvements bit by bit will, overtime, yield great results. When thought of this way, making resolutions for the new year can be very doable. We may fail – in the short term – but if we keep on trying, making small little changes, eventually we will succeed.
Our Savior wants us to change. To become more like Him. He wants us to be as happy as we can be and that comes through changing ourselves for the better. It is easy to get weighed down by our shortcomings and insecurities. It is easy to give up – sometimes before we even start. But Jesus Christ is there, with His enabling Grace, to give us the strength we need to make change possible. Because He has lived a mortal life, Jesus Christ knows how to help us in our endeavors to improve. If we lean on Him and allow His Grace to work in our lives, we will begin to see the change we want. Our tomorrows will become better and better.
This New Year, let us allow change to propel us forward, closer to Jesus Christ. It is because of Him that we have hope for a better tomorrow. It is because of Him that we can change our tomorrows by our choices today. Let us strive to live closer to Jesus Christ, let us change to be more like Him. And remember, tomorrow is always fresh.
