Did you make your NEW MONTH’S RESOLUTION yet? Here it is, the 9th already, and I’ve been so busy, I forgot to make mine!

Yes, I meant what I said: new month’s resolution–even one-third of the way through a month, two-thirds of the way through the year.

Long ago I concluded New Year’s Resolutions are useless, maybe even counterproductive, and decided to make monthly resolutions instead. If I do well in keeping one, I make a new one next month. If not, I renew the previous month’s. Sometimes I renew a lapsed resolution from months or even years past. But sometimes, like now, I forget to keep up on start-of-the-month resolving!

So…what do I do now? Forget it for the rest of this month? Nyet, nein, non! What good would that do? Instead, I jump in late and, if I’m very late (the 9th is pretty tardy), I resolve for the present month plus the one to come.

What kind of resolutions are good this time of year? Any organizational ones, because in summer order tends to disintegrate. Determining just to spend 1o minutes early every day tidying things up, for instance, can lessen the summer’s chaos remarkably.  Any attitude-focused resolution can help temper the  fleshly reactions to heat, humidity, bugs, flies, and sunburn, and improve enjoyment of life tremendously. A few suggested resolutions of this kind:

– to think of five things for which to be grateful each day, duplicating none from previous days–and thank God for them. (I made this resolution for last March.)

– to thank God each day for something you don’t particularly like. (This can change your whole attitude toward a gripe. I mentioned this in the same post.)

– to rejoice in the Lord daily–or hourly: in Who He is and what that means in your life and present situation. (This once remained my long-running resolution, month after month, because it blessed me so much and, after all, applies a mandate of scripture.)

-Me, this month, into next? I am resolving to keep alert for any evidence of God’s hand in the hours of my day, any way His word speaks to me in a special, personal way, and to note it down in my journal so I don’t forget. I have gotten that old chiming clock of my grandfather’s ticking again down in the livingroom, its bonging easily heard  throughout the house, to bong every hour and remind me to pinpoint such evidence in the previous hour and keep alert for it in the next.

Have I “seen” His hand already in my day (which has now reached noon)? Wow! Have I! (Long story. It would have to be another post.) What great immediate benefit from one small short-term resolution!

So…”Happy Resolving!” to all who read. Reflect, resolve, and rejoice! (And share, if you benefit and think others will too.)