A Happy New Year

How are you feeling about facing this New Year? I recall a time when my heart was filled with dread.  Staying with a friend at a remote mission station  in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, we were invited to see in the New Year with  friends on the government station.

I was shortly to move to an even more remote place, and what to me was worse, there was no immediate prospect of having my own house. My heart filled with dread, if only we could have prayed as we entered the New Year, but this was far from their thoughts.

I should have remembered the wonderful words our then King, George VI, read to us in his Christmas  speech. It was 1939, and we were at war with Germany. –It was only recently that I heard that it was his daughter, now our Queen who had read it in the Times and passed it on to her father.

‘And 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.’  (M. Louis Haskins)

 

Looking back, I realise how foolish were my fears. As it turned out, I had the choice of two houses all to myself. I would have had more cause to be scared had I known what was going to happen; for the one single colleague had a breakdown and was sent home while the family on leave was unable to return as planned. But God was with me and gave me grace to face that lonely situation.

Before arriving in New Guinea He had reminded me that He was pledged to come with me and that I would be able to turn to him at all times, as to a friend alongside. And he was, and always is and will be faithful. * and that is a promise for you too. Read Hebrews 13:5-6.

I don’t worry now about seeing in the New Year, prayer or none. I go to bed when I am tired, knowing God will only give me one day at a time and each day will be filled with his blessings.

So to you my faithful Blog readers, I trust you too will be able to face the future with confidence and joy, your hand in God’s. Whatever the future holds, he will take us through and turn it all to good.

A happy New Year.