New Year Sermon

What a difference a year makes

A Sermon preached on Sunday 2nd January 2011 at Evening Prayer in St. Columba’s Parish church.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen

Just before Christmas, our youth group were kindly invited to the studios of UTV for a tour around the news studios and the radio station. In one of the rooms we were given a sneek peak at one of the programmes by a producer who met us in one of the corridors. It was a programme on the Highlights of Northern Ireland news.

The programme showed snippets of the highs and lows of life in the province, from politics, to sport, from ash clouds grounding all the planes to the snow storms recently experienced. This programme and many like it on other TV channels and radio programmes are a good way to look back and see what we all have been living through

2010 has indeed been a year which I am sure each one of us will have our own highs and lows. At this time each year it is a time to look back at what has been and look forward to what will be.

Certainly, looking back it is great that within this parish in 2010 we have welcomed back people into our parish, we have seen new people engage with church, we have been able to work together to get lots of things done -

• Heating systems fixed,
• flower festival organised,
• Ladies Guild & Mens Club anniversaries,
• held our ordination service,
• many baptisms,
• various weddings,
• Creche set up
• we have laughed together,
• cried together,
• worshipped together sunday by sunday
• maintained and extended our choral tradition...with the many special services
• we have welcomed new members into our congregation,
• we have faced challenges and overcome them,
• we do have a great family atmosphere in the parish, where people are prepared to stand alongside each other and work together.

I am sure each one of us could add other things which have meant something to you that has happened in the past 12 months.

As we look forward to a new year - I wonder what your hopes, your dreams, your resolutions, your prayers are for yourself, your family, your friends, your community and indeed this your church?

In Proverbs 29:18 we read that without vision people perish - What is your vision for 2011?

With church - We are looking forward to living up to and indeed helping to answer the prayer which is printed in each of our parish magazines.

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This is a big prayer, a big vision but one to which each one of us are called to play our part.

In our gospel reading this evening we see what happens after Jesus is born. Mary and Joseph up to this point have had what would have been described as a most extrordinary year. Encounters with angels, long journey, no house but a stable, baby born, strange visitors shepherds who came around and then magi making a huge journey to find them.

I am sure the Holy Family were ready to rest up and relax.

Then all of a sudden they are on the road again, responding to an emergency which they could not have expected. But this situation God had everything under control. In the panic and the life and death situation they found themselves in I am sure the turmoil must have been great.

We see from this reading that God had it all under control, he was working is purposes out. We also see that Matthew can look back with hindsight and see that God had already made plans for the flight to egypt.

As we progress into this new year, let us dream, let us plan, let us have a vision of what we could use this year for, of how things could be different.

Let us take the message of this season of Christmas that God is indeed with us, and let us remember that whatever problems, situations, challenges, ups and downs we may face, what ever joys and sorrows we may come across let us remember that message of immanuel, God is with us.

This year, 2011, we have been told by many quaters is going to be a tough, challenging year when finance, commerce employment and other factors are taken into consideration, however we have all got to remember what life is really about and the priority we need to place in our faith in God and his sufficiency.

Let us remember that God is walking with us, that he has a plan for us, he wants us to enjoy living. Jesus himself did say - that I have come so that they may have fulness of life.

My hope and prayer for all of us in this new year is that we will encounter God in a new way, that when trials come, when we are faced with challenges we will remember the truth of Christmas that Immanuel - God is with us.

Let us pray.