For some, turning the calendar from 2021 to 2022 represents a new beginning. You know the drill because you have done it before—you purpose to exercise more, eat less, and floss with consistency. A new year triggers resolutions and thirty-day plans. Trouble is, by the end of January, the new year is a month old and the practices we abandoned thirty days earlier have returned. Come to think of it, if you want a really good deal on lightly used exercise equipment, start checking around the middle of February.

Rather than focusing on the year ahead, perhaps our challenge is to focus on the dawning of each new day, no matter the month. Did not the Lord teach us to face each day as it comes, rather than dwell on an uncertain future? Knowing God cares for the flowers of the field and the fowls of the air gives us confidence that we need not fret about the future. Notice the repetition in the Lord’s prayer when He taught, “Give us day by day our daily bread” (Luke 11:3). Consider also the reason manna was provided to the Children of Israel on an every-day basis and not annually. Paul declared that the inward man is renewed “day by day” rather than year by year. Renewal each day adds up to a year after twelve months, which grows into decades and then a lifetime. The key is to focus on each new day as it dawns.

During our forty-five years of marriage, Debbie has recorded significant daily happenings on a wall calendar she posts each January 1st. Appointments are written in advance, yet she cannot know in the morning what a day will bring. That type of uncertainty can be quite distressing. However, she, and we, can be confident that God will orchestrate the events of our day according to His perfect will. If He is capable of that, then He is capable of governing our year. In that, we have supreme confidence.

Every day brings hope, and one purpose of this magazine is to present messages from a variety of perspectives that remind us of our great hope in God. As you read, may you be inspired to enter daily into His presence through the way that was opened to us by Christ (see "Access Granted"), to keep your trust in God no matter what events transpire (see "Lesson Learned: Trust God"), and to remain undistracted from your commitment to His service (see "Keep On Plowing"). Anxiety is reduced when we live a day at a time rather than projecting months and years into the future. We can only live a day at a time anyway, so may God help us each morning to commit our new day to Him.