It has been many years now since Dr. Norman Vincent Peal wrote has famous book, The Power of Positive Thinking. There are many other books out there which promote positive thinking. A recent check of Amazon showed almost 17,000 books available in that category. So there must be something to be learned from having a positive attitude.

People who have a positive attitude seem to attract others. But we usually try to avoid critical, negative, unpleasant people. We often don't even listen to their good ideas because they present everything in such a negative light. So I was surprised this weekend to hear on the news that Saturday was the Grumpiest Day of the year. The news article said that by this time in January, most people were unhappy that they had already broken their New Years Resolutions, that the holiday bills were in their mailboxes, and that the weather was gray and dreary.

I think that the beginning of a new year fills us with hope that things will be better this year. Some of the mistakes that we've made in the previous year are left behind. We have a fresh start. Disappointment seems to come when things don't change. We don't lose weight. We don't exercise and eat right. We don't save more money. We just continue to do things as we have always done them.

But I've already learned something about change this year from my 5 year-old granddaughter. She likes my exercise bike and has learned to sit on it backwards to ride since her feet reach the pedals that way. One day after pedaling away, she noted that no matter how much she pedaled the bike didn't go anywhere. She said if you want to ride just for the sake of riding, it's fine. But if you really want to go somewhere, you have to find a bike that can move. I made the switch from the bike to other things in my life. If I want it to make changes and go somewhere different, I can't just do the same thing over and over in the same place. I have to change my bike, or plan, to move forward. I want to try that in 2008. I want to move forward.

This applies to our spiritual lives and our church lives as well. We can use this year to try some new ideas about worship, about reaching out to our community, about ministering in the name of Jesus, and about doing church business. We can seek guidance from the Holy Spirit to move forward and not just pedal in place. Let's give it a try.