Thought for the Week - 3.1.2021

New year 2021
 
At the turn of any year, it is the point where we can look both back and forward. We can reflect on the year past and what a different, unusual, scary and confusing year it has been. The year has been dominated by the Coronavirus, but then, by the end of the year a vaccine has been produced – in many ways in itself a modern-day miracle; vaccines normally take years to develop.
 
But then we look forward to what? More uncertainty, more confusion, more moving tier to tier. The question it seems to me is how we adapt and adjust to maybe a completely different way of life. So, who can we trust, who can we rely on?
 
Many of you may well remember the 2010 film “The King’s Speech”, based on a true story where King George V1 who, to cope with a stammer, sees a speech therapist to enable him to speak in public. Perhaps the king’s most famous speech was his Christmas Day message in 1939, in this speech he reassures his people, a people at war, quoting the words of a poem. “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 into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way. So, I went forth, and finding the hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And he led me towards the hills and the breaking of day”.
 
So, my thought for the week is this: There is no better way to start a new year than by putting your hand into God’s hand and letting Him lead you safely into the unknown of 2021.