Articles - From the Vicar

Dear Friends

I have to confess that I have never been very excited about New Year. Perhaps this has something to do with being born "south of the border", but there is more to it than that. I remember highly uneventful New Year's Eves as a young adult, trailing round the streets with my friend looking (sometimes in vain) for a party to enjoy. If a party was discovered I then found it hard to get so very excited about the passing of midnight. I guess that underneath it all I just thought of it as one more day with no particular significance other than the date had changed. I did on occasions make resolutions but I found, probably like most people, that they were much easier to make than to keep. One year I had even broken my resolution by 9.00am on the 1st of January!

Later on, as a Christian, I thought that unlike Christmas there was no good news to celebrate so what was all the fuss. However, more recently I have begun to appreciate New Year in a new way. Yes of course it is just one more day like any other. However, the way we mark and measure time does have meaning for us. I am sure we all remember the Queen's Christmas Address a few years ago when she spoke of her "annus horribilus". Some of us have experienced our own terrible years. When they come along then the start of a new year gives us the chance to draw a line under the past and move on. Of course there is no guarantee that things will get better, but it is strange how bad things do seem to cluster together. While this makes them even harder to bear at the time it can hold out the prospect of calmer waters around the corner.

In this opportunity to move on from the past we do in fact see something of the good news of Christ. God offers us all the opportunity to draw a line under the past by bringing to him our sense of failure, weakness, or sin. The prospect of a new future opens up for us, not through vague optimism, but because of God's grace, mercy and love. So may I take this opportunity to say that I hope (through God's love) that you have a truly happy New Year.

With best wishes
David

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay