Christmas and New Year have come and gone and it has been a delight to share our first Christmas with you all. The New Year brings with it a new beginning as we give thanks to God for the year that has ended and look forward to 2015. The start of 2015 invites us to examine where we have been, so that we may look with confidence to the future. God has called us to this place at this time and the people with whom we live, work and share our community, are God’s blessing to each one of us.
I wonder did you make a New Year’s resolution and if you did how are you getting on? Often we fail to keep our resolutions because we make them in the comfort of our warm sitting room on a winter’s evening and all too often that is where they stay!
The Christmas period brought with it the first really cold weather and how beautiful the hills looked capped in snow. We are very blessed to live in such a beautiful part of the Vale of Clwyd and as the days will soon begin to lengthen, if only slightly, we can look forward to exploring the countryside around us. Maybe this is one of the New Year resolutions you have made this year, to get out into the fresh air and take up some exercise. But all new things require a period of preparation, it’s no good climbing Snowdon without taking a daily walk to strengthen the muscles in preparation.
We hear very little in the bible about Jesus’ childhood but we know it was a time of preparation for all that will follow. In January our readings in Church look to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry here on earth, beginning with his Baptism. Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist as an adult. Many of us were baptised as a baby but for all of us our baptism represents a new beginning as members of the family of God. God calls us to love our neighbours as ourselves, a wonderful resolution to make as we look to the New Year. The New Year brings fresh opportunities and we look forward to all God has in store for us as individuals, a Parish and a community.
With Every Blessing for 2015,
Rev’d. Val Rowlands
