Begin Again by Susan Coolidge

Every day is a fresh beginning,

Every day is the world made new;

You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,

Here is a beautiful hope for you-

A hope for me and a hope for you.

All the past things are past and over,

The tasks are done and the tears are shed;

Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover;

Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled,

Are healed with the healing which night has shed.

Yesterday now is a part of forever,

Bound up in a sheaf, which God holds tight;

With glad days, and sad days and bad days which never

Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,

Their fullness of sunshine or sorrowful night.

Let them go, since we cannot relieve them,

Cannot undo and cannot atone;

God in His mercy, receive, forgive them;

Only the new days are our own,

Today is ours, and today alone.

Here are the skies all burnished brightly,

Here is the spent earth all reborn,

Here are the tired limbs springing lightly

To face the sun and to share the morn,

In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.

Every day is a fresh beginning;

Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,

And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,

And puzzles forecasted and possible pain

Take heart with the day, and begin again.

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.  But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.

Galatians 5:19-25 NLT