I think I’m living now a little too far from St Mary’s Parish Church to hear them, but did you hear the bells ring the new year in? These days fireworks seem to be the way of celebrating the new year – although in Brussels, alas they are forgoing the pyrotechnics for fear of terrorist attacks. But bells are still rung around our country in the opening moments of the new year. For many the first bells heard will have been those of Big Ben striking midnight.
It was Tennyson who penned in his In Memoriam poem the words ‘Ring out wild bells to the wild sky’ with the last lines of that verse saying :
‘The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. ‘
It’s often good to be able to draw a line under the past, rather than to dwell on it, particularly if the past year has been a difficult one. But as Christians, it is right that we should thank God for his mercies to us over the year and acknowledge that even in the darker moments he has been right there alongside us. Or where we may never have come to know the Lord Jesus in that close relationship, we need to know that only he can really draw a line under our past sins and failures—that’s what he came to do, by bearing our sins in his own sinless body on the cross.
Do you need a new start in your spiritual life?
Alfred Lord Tennyson went on to write:
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. ”
Ok, no snow perhaps, but there is falsehood in hearts that needs to be replaced with the true. John 1:14 tells us that Jesus came from the Father, full of grace and truth. That’s what we all need as we start a new year with new things happening in our lives and in the life of the Rehoboth Fellowship.
We need God’s grace afresh and his truth in our hearts The poet ends his composition with these words:
“Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.”
This month we have the joy of welcoming Calix & Bea Furus and their lovely family. We might pray that Calix will be valiant for the truth, but we all need that newness that is found only as we trust and obey ‘the Christ that is to be’ Lord of all in 2016.
And that will truly make it a Happy New Year.
Steve Piggott
January 2016
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