Thoughts from the Benefice

A New Year – a year older and a year of new opportunities.

Many people encourage us to grasp those opportunities and make New Year resolutions. Some promise themselves to diet and calorie count after all that good food and perhaps more than usual Christmas eating and drinking. Some go as far as taking out gym or swimming pool membership and resolve to go several times a week. When asked after a fewweeks how those New Year resolutions are going, the person(shame faced usually) responds that they have not kept up going to the gym or the pool. Just making a resolution and sticking to it is hard for many of us.

Some manage better with time limited resolutions. Others may adopt a dry January with no alcohol – they consider they have drunk sufficient alcohol over Christmas and will not have any more in January. My Catholic colleague gave up sugar in his tea for Lent. He then went back to the normal two or three spoonful’s of sugar in his tea for the rest of the year!

Others try to keep up their resolutions by giving themselves treats – a bar of chocolate after a swim! But this is all about keeping resolutions as an individual. Most of us live and work and are around others. Those others, our friends, our local community, our work colleagues can help us with these New Year resolutions. They might nag – but see it as supporting, reminding, and encouraging. Their good kind words or firm reminders help us to follow through our resolutions and feel it is good to carry on trying to stick with them even when the first flush of enthusiasm has passed.

Here in this benefice, the five church communities can help us. Perhaps we resolve to take our faith more seriously and at a deeper level try to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus that baby born in the stable but in his ministry and teaching had a community around him, the disciples. Also, after the Resurrection and Ascension, God gave us the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. The Holy Spirit continues that work of being a supporter of our resolutions. A reminder both to us as an individual but to each of our communities so they in turn can help and support and encourage us as we try to be better followers of Jesus. Perhaps to read a Bible passage each day and say prayers each day, or continually reflect on our actions and thoughts and behaviours in the light of Christ as we live each day.

So good wishes for your New Year resolutions — if you have made them! May you keep them (saying prayers or bible reading or going to the gym) as an individual or with the help of the community and friends.

Canon Peter Hartley