2012 is set to be a special year for Great Britain as we celebrate
the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and look forward to welcoming people from
all over the world to the Olympic Games in London. Perhaps you have
something important to look forward to in your own personal life this
year such as a special birthday or family event. We are constantly
being told that the year ahead will be as bad, if not worse, than 2011
from an economic point of view, so we all need cheering up in one way
or another! I hope everyone has something good to look forward to this
year.
Whatever the New Year brings for us as a nation or as individuals, we
should surely enter 2012 with hope. I use the word ‘hope’ advisedly.
‘Hope’ as a Christian virtue is much more than ‘hoping for the best’ or
just being generally optimistic. ‘Hope’ means trusting that whatever
happens to us – good or bad – behind everything we see the loving
purposes of God for his whole creation and for ourselves as part of
that creation. We can therefore trust ourselves and all those we love
to His providence as 2012 lies open before us.
A New Year is always a good time to begin something new. Many people
make New Year resolutions, though in the cold light of ordinary daily
life they often fall by the wayside quite quickly! One thing we can all
do, however, is to use the New Year as an opportunity to renew our
commitment to the Christ whose birth we have just celebrated.
On the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, Sunday January 8th, we are
invited to do just this as part of our worship on that day. During
Choral Matins water will be blessed to remind us that God chose the
basic element of water, already so central to all life, to be the
outwards means of our salvation through the sacrament of Baptism. The
celebrant prays that the life-giving Spirit who is depicted in Genesis
as coming down upon the primeval water during creation, will now
‘sanctify these waters of your new creation; that we, with all who have
been born anew by water and the Spirit, may be renewed in your image,
walk by the light of faith and serve you in newness of life; through
your anointed Son Jesus Christ our Lord’.
We will then renew our baptismal commitment to Christ and at the end of
the service will have the opportunity to make the sign of the cross on
our foreheads with the blessed water as a reminder of our baptism and
an outward sign of our re-commitment to the Christian Way. What better
way to celebrate a New Year than this!
