Hello ,

How do you prepare for the New Year? Here are some interesting New Year's traditions from around the globe:

• In Siberia it is tradition to dive into a frozen lake while holding a tree trunk, which is placed underneath the ice.
   
• In a traditional festival from Burma, people splash water on one another to start the New Year with a purified soul.
  Armenian mothers bake special bread which they knead with good luck and good wishes.
   
• In the Philippines homeowners open all their doors and windows on New Year's Eve in order to allow negative energy to leave and good energy to enter.
   
• Spanish tradition holds that eating 12 grapes just before the clock chimes midnight will bring good fortune for all 12 months of the upcoming year.
   
• One New Year's custom in Russia is to write a wish for the upcoming year on a piece of paper, then to burn the paper and place the ashes in a glass of champagne, which needs to be consumed right before the New Year is rung in for the wish to come true.
   
• Residents in Johannesburg, South Africa throw old appliances and furniture out the window, representing the old adage "out with the old and in with the new."
   
• Brazilians wear white clothing, a custom meant to bring good luck for the upcoming year. This is often accompanied by a trip to the beach to throw flowers in the sea while making a wish.

I'm not entirely sure that God-followers have any responsibility to doing anything that's any different than what God has called us to on a daily basis in our spiritual walk.

"Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?" Jesus replied, "'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. A second commandment is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments."

Matthew 22:36-40

These requirements are valuable on any day of the year, but New Year's day would be a great time to re-visit the deep meaning of God's mandates.

Have a great day and God bless!

Pastor Mike / The Open Word