Letter from the Rectory
January 2007
Do you make New Year resolutions? I don’t - in my experience they
last a few days (or at most a few weeks) and then get quickly
forgotten! However, the beginning of a new year, with or without
resolutions, does mark a new stage in all our lives and we naturally
find ourselves wondering what the next twelve months will bring - joy
or sorrow, sickness or health, unforeseen problems or unexpected
delights. Or maybe we’ll have a little of them
all!
Of course we can’t know what will happen to us or to our troubled world
in 2007 – and it’s a good job that we can’t! But what we do know
as Christians is that whatever happens to us, God will be with us
through it all; he won’t leave us to face things alone. We need
have no fear.
Louise Haskins in her famous poem ‘The Gate of the Year’ puts it like
this:
And I said to the man who stood at
the gate of the year:
‘Give me a light, that I may tread
safely into the unknown!’
And he replied:
‘Go out into the darkness and put
your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than
light and safer than a known way.’
So, I went forth, and finding the
Hand of God, trod gently into the night.
And He led me toward the hills and
the breaking of the day in the lone East.
So we can go into the New Year with confidence! Perhaps
resolutions are a waste of time but it is certainly a good thing to
have some priorities for the year ahead, to think out what is really
important in our lives. May I suggest that these might be to get
to know God better in 2007 by giving Him more of ourselves in terms of
prayer and worship? Happy New
Year!
Fr. John