For the last, I don’t know how many years, I have welcomed in the New Year on the first at around 0700 or thereabouts.  This is one holiday that has little meaning to me.

I worked many New Year’s Eves.  Our Crime Prevention Unit, in the mid-70’s, developed a program where people could call a number and one of our volunteers would pick them up and get them safely home.  Usually a Real Estate Office allowed us to use their office and phones.

Now, there is a number of taxi or towing companies that provide that same service all over the country.  Good for them.

The unit also pushed the idea of the one person in the group who didn’t drink to become the dedicated driver for those that did.

In the early 80’s the department had a Driving Under the Influence (DUII) team.  They came to work at 2000 hours and worked until 0400 hours, they worked every night but focused on the weekends.

Bar owners were not happy, but someone, not sure who, convinced them to give free non-alcoholic drinks to designated drivers – and/or provide a driver of their own so they wouldn’t lose business and their customers (not to mention the rest of the community) would be safer.  Some did both.

My first year in office I was asked to come down and talk to the people who put on the Tygh Valley All Indian Rodeo.

This was a fundraiser for the committee and they had scholarships and other positive donations to the community.

The deputies told me that in the days before the rodeo, people would set up across from where our command center and transport vehicles were, so ‘they could watch the show.’  They didn’t even go to the rodeo itself.  (They would set up their chairs in front of their RV’s and watch from early evening until the last drunk was dealt with in the early morning hours.)

The rodeo was known for its drunks and fights – I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it, but I wasn’t going to allow a program that was famous for its disorderly conduct to continue that way in our county, wasn’t sure just what I was going to do or say, but this had to stop.

I didn’t want to ‘shut down’ the rodeo, but there was a better way of putting it on.

I was the second person on the agenda, the first was their insurance agent – the cost of insurance for the three day event was raised to over $8000; the group couldn’t believe it, it was a huge hole in their profits.

There was my opening, and I did have some ideas.

After the agent left it was my turn.  I was told, by the chairman, that the group liked the Sheriff’s Office because we didn’t make a lot of arrests and just let them ‘do their thing’ so to speak.

They really hated the Oregon State Police because they were preying on the attendees, they would wait on the highway and arrest them for DUII.  They even brought in several troopers from outside the area to work the weekend.

Now, the reason for that was a couple years earlier there were five fatal traffic accidents in the area – all the drivers came from the rodeo.  That was not acceptable and OSP determined to get the drivers before they could hurt anyone.

Part of the problem was that many of the attendees had their camp set up at the Fair Grounds, a little over a mile away, and when they drove over there they were being picked up by the troopers.

Then of course there were those that tried to drive home farther south, or north towards The Dalles, intoxicated.

Troopers made well in excess of twenty arrests each year for several years.

I listened to their concerns then suggested that they have a van to take the people back and forth to the fair grounds.  I also agreed with the insurance agent that they should get professional servers for the event. 

They were using people from around the area to check id’s and serve drinks, that of course is loaded with the opportunity of those that want to flaunt the law to do so.

These were good people, whose fathers had started the rodeo sometime in the 1950’s as I recall right.  But, times had changed into what was acceptable and they just didn’t understand that – to their credit, they made improvements, got on the All Indian Rodeo circuit and had a better product in their last years.

It was a much quieter Rodeo that year and years after.  Eventually, however, it just became too expensive to operate; people weren’t having ‘fun’ anymore and they stopped the rodeo.

I do have a couple of stories concerning the rodeo I will share at a later date.

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Psalm 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

So, we write out a resolution.  We are going to do better this new year than last year.

We start listing all the things we need to do to improve our health, family, work, hobbies; we are going to do BETTER.

Everyone knows that the fitness centers have an influx of people signing up to go to their gym.  All these people have the highest desire and motivation to lose weight, or get into better shape; this year will be the year it happens.

Come March and even February the best of intentions are interfered with the reality of life, got busy at work, family had to have more of my time, new programs on TV and new movies to see, and the excuses go on and on.

We don’t stay focused on those goals and before we know it, 2018 will come along and we re-pledge ourselves to doing better than we did in 2017.

As Christians we make the same kind of resolutions in our spiritual life.  We are going to read the Bible all the way through THIS year.  We are going to witness more, we are going to be more active in the church or programs that help people; we are going to grow, spiritually.

Too often those resolutions, too, go by the wayside.

There is nothing wrong with setting goals for oneself, desiring to improve our condition and help others on this planet and serving our Lord in a more effective manner.

Unless God speaks to us differently, we need to be realistic with our goals and set them high enough that we can improve – but no so high we give up. 

We can always re-evaluate our goals if we find we have reached them before the end of the year – and then set new ones.

However, no matter what we want to do new or better in the coming year we need to put God at the very top.  We need to talk with Him, find out what HE wants of us – and that is a daily task.

Mathew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

If we start out this “New” (arbitrarily) Year, with putting God first, we will become better than we were.

What is interesting, to me, as I write this, I don’t know anyone that accepted Jesus the Christ as their personal savior on New Year’s Eve or even New Years.

We became NEW creatures at the foot of the cross:

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

We didn’t make goals, we didn’t tell Him all the things we would do for Him.

In the first few weeks (provided we had a good mentor) we learned more about Christ, we learned more about God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

We learned more about the things that He wanted us to do and how we can serve Him.  We started reading His Word and because we were now a child of His, it had more meaning than anything we had read before.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path

We drew closer to Him and started allowing Him to show us the way for our life.

THEN we may have set goals, but, when we came to Jesus all we could see was the light that God had provided for our dark soul and feel the washing of His blood taking hold of us as tears of shame and gratitude took hold of our souls.

We don’t need to start thinking about turning over a new leaf in the latter part of December.  We can change, with the help and grace of God, any day of the year.

We don’t have to wait until this time of year to re-focus our life for Him, we need to do it daily.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path

It is a very bright light that keeps our soul and heart illuminated by Him.

We gained that light the moment we accepted God’s Son into our heart.  That light, God’s Holy Spirit, was within us and started shining so much that the whole world could see it. 

We came from a very dark place, not realizing how dark it was, into God’s light.  And I for one, didn’t wait until New Year’s Day to accept it – My new creation in Christ, that light that lit up the darkness of my soul, was in April 52 years ago.

Mathew 5:22-23 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

²³ But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Make your goals for the New Year, but make sure daily conversations with God is at the very top of it; unlike the others that may go by the wayside, cling to that one and never let it go.

Having said all that:  Happy New Year and may our Lord truly bless you throughout 2017!

Later, Art (-: