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Page 4 — Wednesday, January 6, 2021 The Millen News Opinions, yours and ours from the Editor’s Desk Joe Brady Millen News editor Last week a very dear friend invited us over for tea and scones to celebrate the New Year. Now, I’m familiar with black eyed peas and cornbread but tea and scones? I al most refused. My first question was, are you having supper...I need more than a biscuit and tea? It had been years since I had attended high tea and I was reminded of my funeral director days when a prominent Claxton, Georgia family used to have high tea at Christmas. For a country boy attending such a formal occasion in little old Claxton with a family nationally known was truly an experience. I can still see the uniformed waiter, pouring piping hot tea from a Minton tea pot into delicate china cups. In fact, the first taste of the designer tea was quite a shock. I imagined this must be what tree bark tastes like. It was also all I could do not to beg for butter as every one around me delicately dabbed jam on the scones and proclaimed how delicious they were. I guess I failed to ap preciate the finer points of scones. Give me a biscuit anyday. All of this was swirling in my thoughts as I parked in front of our friend’s house and hesitantly walked up to the front door. As I spied the silver and delicate china cups sit ting formally on the table I didn’t think I could stomach the hot beverage again, suddenly I asked, “I must confess to despising hot tea, can I please have a cup of coffee?” Well, always a gracious host, my friend Bob quickly informed me, “tough, you’ll drink the tea and you’ll like it.” Saying a quick blessing that I had the forethought to stop by McDonald’s on my way to Bob’s, I sat down to high tea. I must confess, Bob’s scones were much better than what I remembered from years past, and the tea was adequate..if you were perishing from thirst that is. I guess my country roots have firmly taken hold. To quote my favorite movie, Gone With The Wind, “you’re just a mule in horse harness and you’re not fooling anybody.” I have not acquired the taste for hot tea; I prefer my tea with ice and sugar. But I have finally realized why Brits are so skinny. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gold biscuits dripping with butter would probably kill them dead! That’s all for now, take care! We welcome your Chartered 1903 The Millen News is published weekly by The True Citizen Inc. 629 Shadrack Street, Waynesboro, GA The Millen News 856 Cotton Ave. • Millen, Ga. 30442 Phone: (478) 982-5460 • FAX: (478) 982-1785 Periodical postage paid at Millen, Georgia. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: 856 Cotton Ave. Suite A • Millen, Ga. 30442 Roy F. Chalker Jr Publisher Joe Brady Editor Jill DuMars Page Design/Production Sam Eades Advertising Sales Subscription Rates (Includes tax): In Jenkins County $23.00 Elsewhere in Georgia $33.00 Outside of Georgia $39.00 Pastor Brad Asbury The Year has Begun 2020 finally made its exit, some of you celebrated the year that passed and some of you went to bed early and realized the next day that it was 2021. We can all agree that 2020 brought its shares of difficul ties, joys, sorrows, gains, and losses. While the year will go down in history, we can only look backwards to the past year. We cannot change the past; we can only live in the present. Regardless if it is 2021, 2020, or 2060 there are a few things that will always remain the same as long as the Lord allows us to continue: God’s mercies will be new every single morning. Lam entations 3:23-24 says, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases ;his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning;great is your faithfulness.” God’s grace is sufficient for our every need. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” Our sins can be forgiven, but only by God. God sent His Son Jesus who would die in our place, shedding His blood to cover our sins. We turn from our sins and turn to Christ (re pentance), and we experience the sweet forgiveness that God offers to us through the sacri fice of His Son. 1 John 1:9 offers this pre cious promise: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrigh teousness.” These are three simple, but precious promises from God’s Word. We must not forget the pages of Scripture on these first days of the new year, read often from God’s Word and take to heart all that He is teaching you. For every lie we believe, there is a truth from God’s Word that will counteract it. For every bump and turn in the road, there is hope found in the Word of God. For every virus, sickness, disease, famine, or death there is promise to us from the Word of God. Too often we are caught in a storm, and we then forget that the promises of God are for the valley and for the mountain peaks. Often, the valley is the loudest places to hear God’s Word. In 2021, make a commit ment to get alone with God and spend time listening to Him through His Word. His promises will never fail us, He has never and will never let us down. Melissa Walker This Year Let’s Have Positive Thoughts Do you always think posi tively? We think long and hard about all the changes we are going to make in the New Year. We take an inventory of ourselves and our relationships. God loves it when we think about good things. But thinking good thoughts can be hard when bad things happen around us. That’s why God tells us to think about things that are good and wor thy of praise. He wants us to remember that He is in control. He wants us to trust Him and believe that He will take care of us. The Bible tells us in Philip- pians 4:8, “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable.” Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Negative thoughts will try to sneak in and cloud your judgment but it’s up to you to push them out. Sometimes we have no con trol as to what thoughts enter our minds, however we are able to take control of these thoughts. During your quite moments when you need to drown out the noise of ev eryday life and focus your thoughts, think on good things. Whatever we focus on be comes magnified. If you keep your attention on your prob lems and heartaches, they become overwhelming and will control your life. But if you fix your thoughts on God, He becomes magnified in your heart and mind. As the New Year begins, don’t look backwards but ahead to all the good things that will take place in 2021. We all have good inside of us. Everything we need to make it in life is inside all of us. The future of the seed is inside the seed. You can count the many seeds that’s inside an apple but you can’t count how many apples are inside of a seed. You should always believe in yourself and think good thoughts. So believe in yourself, trust in God, and always remember if you qualify yourself you will only get what you qualify for, but if you let God qualify you, you will get more than what you qualify for. Until our next read, love one another! Library Offers Variety For New Year’s Resolution Sharon Blank Welcome to the New Year! Our resolution for 2021 is to provide even better and more innovative service to everyone who comes in our library! If you’re looking to get more active or to help your children to develop their reading skills, try taking the Story Walk down town and making it a fun fam ily activity. Starting at the Old PAL Theater, you’ll be walking most of the length of Cotton Avenue’s downtown area. Each stop along the Story- Walk will have a page from a children’s book, and when you’ve walked the whole length, you’ll have read the entire story! Every month will have a new story, and the one for January will be Jan Brett’s THE MITTEN. It’s the perfect story to warm your heart on a chilly January day!The Story Walk® Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT and devel oped in collaboration with the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. Storywalk® is a registered service mark owned by Ms. Ferguson. Another great thing to do on a cold winter’s day is read, of course! No matter what you’re interested in, the odds are, we either have something for you, or can get it. Whether you want to learn how to improve your photography or start eating healthier, we’ve got something for you. The library will be closed on Monday, January 18 to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On Thursday, January 21 at 10:30 am, the Jenkins County Memo rial Library Board of Trustees will be meeting at the library. New at the library: THE BOOK OF TWO WAYS by Jodi Picoult. Dawn is a passen ger in a crashing plane, bracing for impact. But instead of her mind being filled with thoughts of her family, she finds herself thinking about egyptologist- Wyatt Armstrong, and the days they spent excavating together, before she became a wife and mother. After she survives the crash, the airline offers a gift in com pensation: a free flight to any where in the world. The logical place to go would be home to her husband and son, but her heart is calling for her to head to Egypt instead. Which choice will she make, and how will it transform her life? Well, that’s all for now - see you at the library! Standard or daylight time? General Assembly may ask Georgia voters Georgia Sen. Ben Watson doesn’t care whether the Peach State observes standard time all year or daylight saving time. Watson, R-Savannah, a physician, just wants Georgians to pick one or the other because studies show switching back and forth every six months causes heart disease and sleeping disorders. “I prefer either way,” he said. “Let’s quit changing it.” Watson pre-filed two bills this month, one calling for a nonbinding advisory referendum asking Georgians whether they would rather the state observe standard time all year, daylight saving time all year, or whether they would rather continue switching between the two. Under the other measure, Georgia would observe standard time all year, bypassing a referendum. A third bill pre filed this month by state Rep. Wes Cantrell, R-Woodstock, calls for observing daylight saving time all year. The Senate passed legislation introduced by Watson last March calling for a nonbinding referendum on the issue. But the General Assembly shut down for three months shortly after that vote due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the measure died in the Georgia House of Representatives. “It just got caught up in the pandemic, and I didn’t press it,” Watson said. Only two states - Hawaii and Arizona - remain on standard time all year, as do the overseas U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Any state wishing to observe daylight time all year must seek congressional approval. “My gut is most people would like to go to daylight time all the time,” Watson said. “It may be better to put it on the ballot and see if we can get some consensus.”