He who has promised is faithful

 

Hello everyone!

The New Year is upon us. And I wonder where your thoughts lead you this time of year? 

I find New Years Eve a unique moment in the calendar, a moment when I really feel the presence of two different but connected worlds - the past and the future. Both feel present with me in an almost tangible way. 

 

 

 

Sometimes people talk about “thin” places, places where God and the spiritual feels nearer. I find the New Year to be a “thin” time. All that has happened in my life, all the people, all the places, rush upon me as though it were “yesterday”. We bid farewell to the year, Auld Lang Syne, and yet I know - because New Years Eve reminds me - that I will remember them again. The past. 

But what of the future? Well that great unknown yawns open before me, another year of the Lord only knows what. ‘Man plans, God laughs’ as the old saying goes. Or perhaps better to use scripture, Proverbs 19:21, ‘Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.’ There are plenty of things I’d love to do, but I’d be better off asking, “Lord, what do you have in store for this year?”

We might ask that same question for our church as a whole - Lord, what do you have in store for us? If we’d asked that question a year ago, I wonder what we’d have wanted for St James? As we ask it again now, are your wishes different, or the same? 

What has God been doing, what will he do? 

Our gospel reading on the 28th December, Luke 2, was I imagine for Simeon one of those “thin” times. This faithful old priest was able to look back not only on his own life but on the history of God’s people as his own, his identity totally bound up with that of God’s people as he was ‘longing for the consolation of Israel’ 

And finally the day comes when he holds the baby Jesus in his arms. And all that history comes flooding in, and all that future opens up before him. The past and future both there in that thin place, in he holds his saviour, his king, his God. And what does he say?

‘Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,

    you may now dismiss your servant in peace.’

 

Surrounded by the past and the future he looks down at that baby and sees that it is God’s promise that holds them together, that bridges the gap. We don’t know what the future holds, but like Simeon we have God’s promises, in God’s word, to go with us.

Whatever we face this year we know that ‘he who has promised is faithful’.

 

I know we had a bible verse for 2025. Perhaps this might be the one for 2026? Hebrews 10:23 ‘Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.’

Many many years Simeon waited, but he never wavered, he held fast to the confession of his hope, because he knew God was faithful. 

 

As we go into this new year together, let’s look back with thanks on all that God has done, let’s be there for one another, and let’s look forward, confident in the promises of God - for ‘he who has promised is faithful’. 

Rev Jack Marsh