How has the New Year begun for you?
It was good to be with others in Ripon last night as we carried our candles from the cathedral to the market square. What struck me as we walked along Kirkgate was that as people’s candles blew out in the wind someone you didn’t know appeared to relight them.
At the beginning of 2024, a lot of wishes sent say we should have a prosperous New Year. I’m uncomfortable with that. The prosperity Gospel will always ignore or damage the poor. Instead like the light bearers and sharers last night, we need a commitment to community. Urgently.
Breakfast tv this morning had a man talking about self improvement. At the beginning of the year there are those who will tell us we are too fat, too unproductive, too selfish, in fact we need changing! In the world today added to wars and rumours of wars is the scare of tsunami in Japan.
This year will also see elections in this country and in America. Both could be brutal dominated by nasty stories spread by the other side to make us see voting for someone might be foolish. No wonder the Archbishop of Canterbury in his New Year message today called for leaders to remember those they disagree with share a common humanity and we’ve forgotten decency.
Where’s the Christmas joy gone? Maybe we have to search for it. Maybe we have to let the fripperies go for another year. I was in the Spar getting a pint of milk. Even walking past tubs of chocolates and biscuits made me feel unwell. There comes a point when we’ve had enough. Walking into one of my churches just now Christmas is still up, but some of it is looking tired and notices are now very out of date. We walked out of the building after Christmas morning service and we’ve not been back in there since as there wasn’t a service there yesterday.
Maybe we have to look for Christmas joy in small ways, in quiet places, where people do share light to strangers and where we work together to defeat the darkness. Maybe we need a new commitment to seek God this year. Let’s not let the gloom and tiredness and negativity around us beat us.
John Wesley knew about New Year optimism. His world was as complicated as ours is. But he spoke with confidence into society the heralding of God’s Kingdom where it hadn’t been heralded before. He saw an optimism because of God’s grace which was, and is more powerful than wars and selfishness and this lack of decency out there today.
If you keep a diary, what have you written today on its first page? Slept. Washed up. Put washing on. Dinner. Bought some bits in the shops. Opened church for a craft group. Rain. That’s been my January 1!
Reflect then today that the age of 82 Wesley wrote in his journal, on Saturday 1 January 1785, this:
“Whether this be the last or no, may it be the best year of my life!”
There’s optimism in Christ!
Someone suggested the other day we take a jar at the beginning of the year and every time something good happens we write it on a piece of paper and put it in the jar. Then we read all the pieces of paper next New Year’s Eve, and we will see, despite everything, our blessings will outweigh our despondency. That’s not a bad idea. We will then see, as we sang in my last hymn yesterday that God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year.
A happy and peaceful New Year then. May we pass the light to each other and be thankful it shines no matter how mad it is around us.
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