“A child, more than all other gifts that earth can offer declining man, brings with it hope, and forward-looking thoughts.”

So wrote T.S. Eliot many years ago. So true.

What is more exciting, more wonderful, than welcoming a new child — a brand, spanking new human being — into your family?

What indeed: Be it your very own child … or grandchild. Such a time is almost indescribably grand … emotional … holy. There just really aren’t words adequate to even begin to describe the miracle of a new life.

Such an event really does bring with it “hope and forward-looking thoughts.”

In a similar, yet different way, of course, so too does a new year bring with it hope and forward-looking thoughts. Not to equate the two — new child, new year — but these two events do, indeed, make us turn our thoughts to the future.

So here we are with a brand new year. Two thousand and twelve. 2012.

Exactly one century ago the Titanic went down.

One hundred years ago a lad from Carlisle Indian School wrote his name into sports immortality. Jim Thorpe won the decathlon at the 1912 Olympics held in Stockholm.

What will those who inhabit this land one hundred years from now know about our time?

Will they remark upon some truly significant events? A cure for cancer? Some cataclysmic natural (or man caused) disaster? An unforeseen (by us) technological achievement (it seems there’s something new almost every day now)? A new space discovery?

For us to even try to imagine what things will be like a hundred years out is impossible.

What we are given is a new year. What will our leaders make of it? What will we — you and I — make of it?

We each have a finite length of time to live our lives.

For me — and probably for most of you who are reading this — most of our time is now behind us.

We really should try to make every day count. For, in truth, every day really is a blessing.

I especially like what someone said at a public gathering less than a year ago.

“The value of one’s life is measured, not by wealth, or power, or status, or fame … but by how well we have loved.”

And so it is.

May you have a very good New Year.

Shalom.