January Message

New Year Greetings from your Rector,

A Happy New Year to you and yours!

A very warm welcome to 2024! You may realise that 2024 is a leap year, so we have one extra day in February to get things done. Perhaps you are lucky enough, like me, to know someone with a birthday on 29thFebruary- they tend to be the youngest people we know…

The start of a new year gives us the opportunity to look back on what has been, and look forward to what might be, to what is to come. It’s a chance to reflect on what has happened during 2023, the good and the bad, to pray through the choices we have made and the rights, and wrongs, that are to be remembered with celebration or resignation.

With each year that passes we all get older, and hopefully wiser, and we take that wisdom into the New Year with high hopes that each and every year will be better than the last one. For some the ritual of washing away the old is taken literally, as they swim in the sea every new year, the cold embrace of the salty water cleansing and washing away the past year.

For us as Christians, we don’t have to wait until New Year, or swim in an icy sea, to reflect or wash away the past. Each and every day, and particularly on Sundays, we reflect on the past week, give thanks for the good things and confess our mistakes, then receive God’s forgiveness as we begin each week with a clean slate.

Sadly, the slate is never clean by the end of the day, never mind the end of the week, but as we remember from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” we thankfully do not have to be perfect to receive God’s grace.

2024 will not be perfect, just as we are not perfect, but knowing we are forgiven and know Jesus’ love in our hearts means we can leap into the New Year with joy.

God bless you.

Revd Chris