So often our New Year’s resolutions sound something like this… I will stop smoking, I will stop eating after 6p.m, or I will stop this habit or stop doing that thing. No one has ever made the New Year’s resolution that they will become an alcoholic or a thief. Most, if not all New Year’s resolutions are about us stopping something negative in our lives. In most cases, that diet I started on the January 2nd, (after all, on January 1st there is football games and I have to celebrate) lasts about a week, maybe two if I am lucky.

How about this positive suggestion for a New Year’s resolution… “I will bless the L-RD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” No matter what this New Year brings (sort of like marriage vows) sickness, health, richness, poorness, happy time, sad time, be resolved to “bless the L-RD at all times.”
If I am praising my L-RD, I won’t have time to speak those negative thoughts or spread that gossip. When I am not doing so well, if I praise Him because He is my Heavenly Father and he loves me, I will find a joy I never had before.
In the Psalms King David says “I will praise” forty times and the word praise is used one hundred and twenty six times. Here is one that might encourage you… “But I will hope continually, and will praise you yet more and more.”
Whenever I go over to my dear friend Nana’s house, as she always sets something to eat in front of me, (I thought my mother was a good food salesman and as Jewish as she was she did not hold a candle to Nana). Nana always tells me, “Eat you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.” Today I tell her, “yes I do… my pants won’t fit!”
Praise G-D, you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. If you get in the habit of singing His praises all the day long, when the sick days come and the hard days are knocking on your door you will have a joy that can’t be moved or taken away from you. Remember, talking about G-D, King David reminds us …“In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
At the start of this New Year, how about making the resolution that you will continually bless the L-RD, once you take the first step G-D will enable you to keep it all year long. Pull up a chair, fall to your knees at the right hand of G-D and experience “pleasures forevermore.”