Dearly beloved,

Happy and blessed New Year! Another page has turned on our calendars and I have to start remembering to type “2025” rather than “2024”.

While it is really just one day & year turning into the next, we place a great deal of significance of this change. Many will make resolutions or intentions for the New Year – falling within the categories of health, exercise and the like. Its kind of like “giving something up for Lent”.

I don’t know about you, but I am terrible about keeping resolutions. In fact, I gave them up a number of years ago because I knew that I would always fail to keep them. They seem so very unattainable. Its like if I missed exercising or eating right for one day, then its all over and I put my resolutions away for another year.

Yet, do we ever allow ourselves any grace? You know that “thing” that we claim as people of faith; that gift that God gives to us again and again and again. On Sundays, we intentionally begin our worship with confession because we know that we haven’t lived as God intends us to live with one another in this world.

It doesn’t end with our confession, but like the father running out to meet his son that had wandered away, God greets us with open arms, enfolding us with love and grace. God knows our struggles and loves us still. And God encourages us to love ourselves with that self same love.

So, whether you make resolutions for this New Year or not – resolve to remember that you are loved, forgiven and given the gift of everlasting grace now and always!

peace in Christ,

Pastor Jen

A blessing for the New Year
We stand to face the future:
God behind us in the past;
Christ before us, the way ahead;
Christ beside us in this moment;
Christ beneath us in our weakness;
Christ above us to shield us –
beneath the shadow of his wings we are safe;
Christ between us to bind us in the unity of his love;
Christ in us, equipping us with his all-sufficient grace.

Thus armed, guided and protected we face the new year.

Now we arise and go forth on the journey before us,
knowing that, where Christ leads,
life is a journey home.
Therefore we travel in faith, in hope, and in love,
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

May the blessing of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
be upon us and upon all this year and to all eternity. Amen

(Ian Cowie. Hay & Stardust, Iona press)

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)