For many people, that point in time when an old year dies and a new year is born is a time for revelry, For not a few such revelry reaches the full measure of unconsciousness to the hard fact that another year of life has passed into its long yesterday. There is reason to suspect that there is in much of the excessive revelry of New Year’s Eve an element of escape from the somber fact that life moves relentlessly on. It is also not at all unlikely that some are unwittingly perhaps hushing tIle voice of an uncomfortable conscience. Many people just don’t like to pause in sober reflection on the current of their lives. They don’t like to number their days after the injunction of Psalm 90. Such meditative reflection on their lives may reveal too much that is painful and uncomplimentary.

For others the entrance into the new year is a time for rather juvenile anticipation. In the new year we’ll do great things. I’m going to hit the five-figure salary bracket this year. It’s going to be a wonderful year, with everything breaking my way…Then such folk easily resolve to conquer some unworthy habit. Profoundly insensitive to the weighty impediments of sinful flesh they take off into the golden heights of fantasy, and dream their childish dreams of conquest, ease and money. Certainly these people also fail to number their days in such a way that they may get a heart of wisdom. Their heart is increasingly one of folly.

It is good to number our days—soberly, prayerfully. It is good to ask ourselves if we are getting more and more a heart of wisdom, that transcendent wisdom that is from God and that has the fear of his name as it first principle.

As we start on our journey through the new year 1956, we, Reformed Fellowship, Inc., publishers of Torch and Trumpet, would like all of our readers to join us in numbering our days before the Lord. We as a fellowship and you as our readers and supporters have joined hands in an earnest effort to further the interests of the faith of our fathers. We are wholly committed to that faith which we believe to be thoroughly scriptural, the essence of the living Word of the living God. To further the interests of that faith effectively so that God is glorified by such efforts, each of us has to number his days to assess the measure of his devotion to the Lord and his cause. We must ask ourselves whether our devotion has been genuine and whether we have labored faithfully. No doubt each of us must number days which tell us of failure and shortcoming.

With hearts instructed by this sober assessment we would go forward into this new year. We wish each of our readers and supporters a most blessed year, a year of joyful fulfillment of our vocation as children of God called in Christ to glorify our King and Redeemer in all things. And our earnest prayer is that his Kingdom may be prospered through the efforts of our magazine, and his glory may shine the more brightly from its pages.

REFORMED FELLOWSHIP