You may not know the name Sarah Winchester, but you may know about her home in San Jose, California.  For 38years, 24 hours a day, workmen remodeled that house.  There are 40 bedrooms in the Winchester house -- 161 rooms altogether.  There are 13 bathrooms, 9 kitchens, 10,000 windows, and 40 staircases.  For 38 years, one resident, Sarah Winchester, kept adding to her house.  Her son had died in infancy and, fifteen years after their marriage, her husband died.  Sarah, now made painfully aware of the fleetingness of life, went to a spiritualist who told her that she had to build a house and continue building and never stop because the day she stopped she would join her husband and her son. 

"What bizarre behavior,” you say, and you’re right. But the problem is a common one -- trying to hold on to the present

As you move into the new year, remember -- the past is forgiven; the future is promise; so live in the present with hope.