Forgive me if I have said this before, but, "Happy New Year." It may be the epitome of redundancy but I have given this greeting for 60 years and I mean it as sincerely this year as I have all the years preceding.

The first few years of my life, I had no teeth and so all I could say was "Goo-goo, daa-daa." It meant the same thing. This year I have all of my teeth but I am not certain how many more years.

The way we start life is the way we usually end life, with no teeth and drooling all the time with a silly grin on our face.

Why is it so cute to have a toothless drool at three months but rather disgusting when you are 93 years old?

We all start life wearing diapers and if we live long enough we will end our life wearing the same apparatus. I guess it all depends upon what we do between the two events.

I suppose I could be guilty of not learning as much as I could at my age, but one thing I have learned and that is the good things in life are always repeated. Sure, there are some things that we do once in a lifetime and cherish their memories, but the good things in life are those things we continually repeat.

I would wager that in this New Year there would be relatively few, if any, new things. The past year was supposed to carry with it a lot of brand-new things. Most things were those repeated ad nausea for many years.

This year is an election year. Of course, the purpose of this year is to elect a new president. Every four years we elect a "new" president and I have participated in many presidential elections. At least, I went to the voting booth and voted. In all those years of electing a "new" president it has usually worked out that the new president was remarkably quite like the old president.

Some political pundits make a great deal between a Republican and a Democrat. It may be my age, but it seems to me that most Democrats are Republicans in disguise and most Republicans are Democrats in disguise. If I was backed up against a wall with a firing squad in front of me and asked to tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican, the only thing I could come up with would be the spelling.

A Republican when elected will always act like a Democrat and a Democrat when elected will usually act like a Republican. Then they wonder why the voting public is confused.

As far as I am concerned, a rattlesnake wearing a rabbit outfit does not change its nature. It still has poisonous fangs looking for some human flesh.

What has not changed is the fact that a politician running for office will say anything to get elected and then once elected will develop an acute sense of amnesia, which is not that cute.

Whenever I hear politicians say that when they are elected they are going to change things I know I am either listening to a fool or someone who is trying to fool me. Hundreds of politicians have run on the platform of changing Washington DC. Well, how has that been working?

The coming presidential election will be the same as every other one in the history of the United States.

In spite of that, there are a few things I am glad will not change.

The things that are really important in life are those things that do not change.

For instance, I am glad the sun comes up every morning. Even though every day is a new day, the same sun starts the day with its rising. The beautiful thing about this is that we can only live one day at a time. I cannot remember how much time I have spent worrying about something in the future and when that day came, I worried in vain.

I am so glad that the rising of the sun is not in the hands of some political committee somewhere. Wherever two or three politicians are gathered together, there is gridlock. If a political committee were responsible for the rising of the sun, it would never rise. The only thing a political committee can do when it comes to the phenomenon of rising is in the area of taxes and their salaries.

As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow so will our taxes and so will the salaries of the politicians. Would be great the politician’s salary was tied to the economy? If the economy was up, the politicians would get a raise. If the economy went down, the politicians would take a cut in salary.

I am not sure how to do that, but if it ever became law in our country, the economy of our country would be on the rise for generations to come.

Another redundancy that I am delighted to participate in and that is the mercies of God. "It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness" (Lamentations 3: 22-23 KJV).

Although repeated daily, God's mercies are never redundant.

Dr. James L. Snyder, is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, 1471 Pine Road, Ocala, FL 34472. He lives with his wife in Silver Springs Shores. James is an award winning author whose books are available at https://amzn.to/2SMOjwO.

Call him at 352-687-4240 or e-mail [email protected]. The church web site is www.whatafellowship.com.

Dr. James L. Snyder, is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, 1471 Pine Road, Ocala, FL 34472. He lives with his wife in Silver Springs Shores. James is an award winning author whose books are available at https://amzn.to/2SMOjwO.

Call him at 352-687-4240 or e-mail [email protected]. The church web site is www.whatafellowship.com.