Wisdom for a New Year

I’ve always looked forward to starting a new diary at the turn of the year.  January 1^st feels like no other date in the calendar; it’s full of promise becoming, perhaps, the most ‘hope-filled’ day of the year.  On this day many make a personal resolution that things will never be the same again.  In the words of Sydney Carter’s hymn it’s from ‘the old we travel to the new...’

Yet like all dates and anniversaries a new page in the diary, even a first one, doesn’t have the power to change us.  For like the Roman god Janus, after whom this month is named, we face two directions at once, both the past and future.  We bring yesterday into today for we can never truly leave our past because, in part, it has both made and shaped us into the people we are today.

So what then can we hope for on January 1^st?

I think we can hope for ‘wisdom’.

I long to live 2016 having learnt from 2015.  Last year I had joys and sorrows, successes and failures.  I received love yet sometimes showed indifference.  Although I suspect 2016 will be similar to the year we’ve just left, I hope I’ve learnt some lessons about myself, my community and God.  My prayer is that such life experiences from the last twelve months will inform those that commence on that fresh first page of my 2016 diary.

So along with the greeting Happy New Year may I also wish you wisdom – the sort that looks back to the old year and then guides us into the new.

Best wishes,

Ian