It’s 2025 and we look forward to the possibilities the New Year presents.

Will the year, global issues and things beyond our personal control, dictate how life moves on or will we have the biggest ‘say’?

Will it be a better year for us all?
Will the world become more stable, a better place?
Will our plans become a reality even exceeding our hopes and expectations?

On New Years Eve, joyous revelling looked forward with great expectations. Firework displays across the globe were fantastic, Auld Lang Syne echoed across our nation, drinks flowed and a dram crossed many palates. Hope was high, ‘Things will be better’.

After Christmas, that winter break full of light, partying, families together, away breaks and more, it is back to work with a will. I hope all will have a positive feeling about their Monday mornings as they come round with clockwork regularity.

I guess that for some, with the major home building programmes going on wherever we go, thoughts might be about down-sizing, pastures new or a place in the sun. Other thoughts may simply wish for better health, longer days, less grey, warmth and Spring.

Remember, that as soon as the grass starts to grow once more, the lambs will be chasing around and pronking in the fields again. What a lift nature can give us.

For myself I too feel uncertainty about the world that many I speak to share. The potential for disaster, man-made or natural , largely caused by man, seems to bug the back of the mind. Having renewed my commitment to the way of the Christmas Christ-child I find I have more peace about the way things are and, the way I am in my head, and life in general.

Take to heart the words quoted by king George VI concluding his Christmas Message in 1939 when World War II was heading for the grossest horrors …’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 in the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

God Bless

George
Acting Lay Chair, Parochial Church Council of the Asterby Group of Parishes