January/February 2025
Let me begin by wishing you all a very ‘ Happy New Year’ and I hope that you enjoyed celebrating Christmas with your family and friends. But here we are in 2025! Can you believe it?
I wonder if you celebrated the end of 2024 quietly or with a BANG? Well I certainly saw it out with a bang! We had all gone to Simon and Hannah’s on New Year’s Eve, to exchange Christmas presents as we’d not seen them at Christmas and to wish them all a Happy New Year. When we arrived at the house I loaded myself up with bags of presents, opened the porch door and then I tripped over the threshold and landed on the floor with a loud BANG bruising my calf, knee and arm badly! Not the entrance I had hoped for but as someone said ‘ Grandma has landed!’
Now what has that got to do New Year? I can hear you asking. Well the direction I was heading in to Simons house suddenly took a different turn and that brings me to the wider matter of whose direction we actually follow throughout our lives, whose voice do we listen to in our daily living? How do we navigate through life and not follow what everyone else is doing or saying.
Thinking about this reminded me of Joshua and how he calls on the people to remember the Covenant and in chapter 24 he recounts the journey from Egypt to across the Jordan. But he doesn’t dwell on the times they get lost (spiritually) or listened to everyone’s bad ideas instead of Gods call. Instead he points out how God has led them to their destination. He gives them a challenge as to the direction of their faith. It’s a time of decision and he gives the people the words, ‘ As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’
I hope this is something we can echo in all the challenges we may face in the coming year. We need to listen for Gods still small voice guiding and directing us, keeping our feet firmly on the ground as we safely step over the threshold and along the path God has mapped out for us in this church.
Every blessing,
Sue