Happy New Year?
Join Jo as she looks through the winter darkness into the New Year to see where light, love and hope can be found…
~ By Jo Trickey
Transcript:
‘Happy New Year!’ That’s the cry that we’ve heard up and down the country, isn’t it. In pubs, and homes and parties over the last week. As we’ve said goodbye to the old and welcomed in the new. It’s the wonderful celebration of something new starting, recapping what’s happened, and looking ahead. And I don’t know about you, but if I’m honest, over the last few years, New Year’s lost a little bit of its hope and optimism. Maybe I’m just getting old, maybe the naivety of youth is wearing off, but it feels like the it’s gone a little bit sour.
As the New Year turns and we’ve looked into the New Year over the last few years the news has been full of ‘Australia’s on fire!’ There’s a global pandemic. Oh, and there’s war in Europe, and there’s a cost of living crisis.
It feels like we can’t get through the darkness of winter without some even greater darkness hitting us on the global stage. Might be that for you the challenges are closer to home. Might be that there’s a lot of job uncertainty, that it feels hopeless; might be that financial pressures are high for you as for lots of us this year; it might be that there are family challenges. Whatever it is we’re facing, we’re not alone in that.
Over Christmas we watched the beautiful, illustrated film ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse’ based on illustrations and a book by Charlie Mackesy. In the book Charlie writes ‘When the big things feel out of control, focus on what you love right under your nose.’ For a while at least we can shut out the darkness, can’t we, inhabiting the moment, making precious memories and investing in important relationships. But when we look around, it feels like we need something bigger. I can’t just hide in the moment and wish away all the challenges around me. I need a bigger love, a bigger hope, a bigger light to make a difference in the world I live in.’
In Jesus, we see that bigger light and hope and love; in the intimacy of that family in the nativity, we see the love, and the life, and the light, right in front of us. But we also encounter that cosmic transformation, that is God himself stepping into his world; to be with his people to transform their situation, through love and grace. John in his gospel, in his, er, his account of Jesus' life writes this: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” (John 1:4.) In Jesus light and life and hope come into our world on a cosmic scale, big enough to transform even the biggest of problems. A love bigger than the darkness. A hope stronger than the chaos. And a light that reaches even to the darkest and hardest of places.
Jesus promises that he is the ‘happy’ in our Happy New Year. He is the light, and the love, and the hope, that we get to hold on to. I’m going to walk with Jesus with hop into the New Year, and I wonder if you would like to join me?