New Beginnings

No. 21 - 01st January 2017

Welcome to the New Year, and to all the opportunities it might hold out for you. New Beginnings can produce a lot of different emotions in us. Either excitement or fear about what lies ahead. Perhaps relief that last year with all its troubles is finally over. Maybe you’re one of the fortunate ones who can look back over these last twelve months with a sense of real pride and joy at what has been achieved. I hope so.

But for many, there’s a very real sense of anxiety about what lies ahead. None of us really know what’s coming up. It’s just one big unknown. This year will have its joys and its sorrows. And we can certainly rely on there being plenty of political uncertainties. It’s that time of year when all the pundits are trying to second guess what the new year will bring, not just for us here in Britain, but for Europe and indeed for the rest of the world. Where they used to make such confident predictions, now what you hear is, “Nothing is predictable any more”. “The rule book has been torn up”. “Our compass is broken”. And for a lot of people that’s a most uncomfortable place to be in. I spoke recently about the motto on the American dollar bill which says, “In God we Trust.” I’m sure it was no accident putting it across the mighty American Dollar. It’s a real challenge to where our security lies in these uncertain times. Is it in the dollar and our material possessions, or is it in God?

I love that poem that King George VI read out on his 1939 Christmas broadcast. ‘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 gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.”

May you have a very happy New Year and find your security in clinging on to the hand of God.