The Reasons for the Season

"To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven – and our purpose at this season is one of great hope…"
As the last days of December bring us all closer to a new year, so they bring us all closer together in our own celebrations of faith and family. Whether you mark the days of Chanukah, or Kwanzaa, or Christmas, or Ramadan or simply the turning of time into 1998, now is when you look back with wisdom and forward with hope.
It’s A Wonderful Life the movie proclaimed, and the declaration is repeated on our televisions every year.
The movie is right.
It simply is a wonderful life —each day filled with new adventures, chances to learn, and opportunities to reshape our world.
There is the chance for Queens neighbors to help neighbors, for businesses to give back, and for the system to work. There is the chance for our borough, the most ethnically diverse community on the face of the planet, to make the world a bit smaller through acceptance of other’s cultures. Better yet, those chances are often the reality of these pages.
And on a higher plane, we have the chance every day to enjoy the company of the people who make your life worth living, and to dream of the possibilities for all the tomorrows in the rest or your life. We have the choice to make the lives we live wonderful or to let them be worthless.
As visions of brightly wrapped gifts dance in our heads and the time of resolutions approaches, we have our own wish for you. We wish you hope — the world’s greatest motivator — and companions who share your hope.
Because it is that treasured gift of hope that is open to us all, can recreate a world or a neighborhood, and ensure a truly wonderful life.