A very Happy New Year to you all
Where did this last year go to? It’s hard to believe that by time you read this article it will be 2019. It just seems to be a natural thing to wonder at the beginning of a New Year – will it be another New Year to look forward to, or one filled with disappointment and sadness?
Many of us will have been visiting families and friends for Christmas. If we’ve been on a long journey we will have been packing suitcases with things to take with us – trying to decide what to take with us and what to leave behind. If we were flying we would have to be careful not to take more than our baggage allowance! Now as we enter into the New Year of 2019, perhaps we need to take stock of what we need to take with us and what we need to leave behind.
All of us arrived from another country to begin our new lives in Spain and there have been many times when we’ve taken stock of all the things we have brought with us and wondered why? It’s not just the tangible things. We brought memories with us, good and bad experiences; things that on reflection we wish we could leave behind.
Perhaps the start of another New Year is a good time to look at the inventory and say to ourselves – do I need this anymore?
New Year is good time to look at the things we can leave behind, but also at the things we can pick up on and reinforce in our lives. Life gives us choices. We can take with us many things – hope, expectation, thankfulness, or we can take dread, fear, bitterness, emptiness etc.
Hope – It’s a New Year – a clean page which gives us the opportunity to look forward with new hope and excitement.
Expectation – There will be new things; great things to come.
Thankfulness – Maybe 2018 was a sad year and we are thankful that it is over.
Or… Dread – Things that might happen
Fear– We don’t know what the future holds and maybe it’s an untrodden path.
Emptiness – Someone or something missing? How can we move forward without that person we knew for so long?
What do we leave behind? – disappointments, losses, failures?
King George VI addressed the nation at Christmas 1939. The country had been at war for just three months and the future was decidedly uncertain. He read from a poem:
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 better than light and safer than a known way.
As Christians we are confident that whatever this New Year brings, God has promised never to leave us or forsake us. We know there will be dark times ahead, but we also know that we can put our trust in God and look forward to the New Year in the way King George ended his Christmas message
“May that Almighty Hand guide and uphold us all.”
If you want to drop some of the old baggage of life and start on a new adventure with God, why not come along one Sunday and put your hand in the hand of God?
We are excited at Wellspring at all God has for us this New Year.
We wish you all a Very Happy New Year
