new beginnings

The new year always puts me in the mood for new beginnings.

Like the start of another new day, or the start of another new week. Except on a slightly larger scale.

So today, I suppose, has been, one way or another, about those new beginnings.

I did some tidying up around the office here, for one thing. In the run-up to Christmas a whole load of things start piling up.

Quite literally. With the end result there are piles of books and piles of paper and piles of files and .. well, piles of just about anything that can in any way conceivably be stacked!

So I made a start on sorting through these piles and getting rid of stuff that's just a clutter and is past its sell-by date and putting things away where they belong (which includes the default filing cabinet - the waste-paper basket) and dealing with the pile of correspondence that builds up.

Some people call it 'blitzing' the place. But I think it's maybe better to see it more as giving a new beginning to the room. Clearing it out and cleaning it up and starting all over again.

A three-dimensional, spacial sort of sacrament affirming the reality of God's complete forgiveness in Jesus Christ his son.

I like to start the year with that most visible proclamation of the grace there is in Christ. A proclamation I can see and feel and even walk around in and enjoy.

In him there is forgiveness! It's a wonderful reminder of that lovely new beginning that there is at the heart of the message of Jesus.

It's also a time to plan ahead in terms of all the different services of worship that the coming weeks will bring. Sunday mornings and Sunday nights and Wednesdays through the day.

With each of them the start of the year is a time of new beginnings.

It all takes time. Listening for the voice of God himself. Figuring out the drift of where he's taking us and what that's going to mean in terms of all these different contexts where we'll gather over coming weeks for worship.

But I felt that I was getting there. Starting to see the picture. Beginning to get a feel for what the Lord intends to say. As I say, it all takes time.

And space. Which by and large there's been. There aren't that many folk around the halls this week. So there's quietness and space.

And yes, a sense of new beginnings in his dealings with us here. Another chapter slowly opening up. God's future now emerging as we turn another corner in the spiralling march of time.

I was doing some work on the website, too. I thought it was time for a bit of that as well. Updating the thing in the aftermath of all the festive emphasis there's been. Moving on.

Affirming in the world of cyberspace as well that this is indeed a time for new beginnings.

We've a baptism this Sunday coming. The first in the year. The first Sunday, that is. Well, the first baptism as well, of course!

In fact it's two baptisms, celebrating together, with a couple who joined us here a month or so ago, the birth back in April of their two little boys. Right charmers they are as well!

I'm thrilled to bits we can start the year like this. Celebrating life. New beginnings. A whole new life before these little boys. A whole new life as well, in every sense, for their Mum and Dad.

It's almost like the Lord's intent on saying to us here that this is where we're at. A time of new beginnings.

Not just in the 'formal' sense of this being the first Sunday in January. But in a wonderfully real, dynamic sort of way. God himself beginning some new thing right here among and through us all.

So this afternoon I had time with the father. Going over the way things are likely to be. Chatting through the whole thing and praying for them all. Even changing one of the songs.

They're a great young couple. Enthusiastic, warm and eager for God's best.

And yet, I'm also so aware that this is not the only sort of new beginning that there is. I called by on a lady later on, whose husband died a few weeks back. And now she's on her own.

For her this, too, is very much a time of new beginnings. But for her it's hard and sore and not what she would wish at all.

Strangely appropriate, then, that I should have found through the letterbox this morning a card which included some words from a prayer of guy called Thomas Merton.

(He's quite well-known in certain circles. In fact, most folk in the know would say he was the one of the foremost Roman Catholic authors of last century. A pious sort of guy, who lived pretty close to the Lord and yet, thankfully, spoke in a fairly down-to-earth sort of way).

He's honest enough to admit a fair degree of ignorance - in terms of where it is the Lord is leading him. This is how he ends his prayer -

"... Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

Which seems a pretty good note on which to start the year. And just the spirit we need to embrace God's new beginnings for us all.