New year celebrations in different countries

Bryan, our Parish administrator, who hails from the USA persuaded Andrejs our verger, who hails from Latvia and I to join him last week for a salt beef sandwich lunch in a West End Department store not a million miles from here. It was well worth the journey and as we tucked in the conversation turned to different New Year traditions. I remembered my father first footing every year at home and Andrejs described the Latvian tradition of putting 12 different dishes on the supper table on New Year’s Eve. It’s also the custom there not to spend any money on the first 2 days.

Well I expect we have our 2012 Calendars ready and diaries to hand. No doubt they’re already showing meetings, arrangements, engagements, holidays pencilled in and even booked. Yet a look back at 2011 reminds us just how unpredictable life can be. The trouble is we never quite know what will happen.Who would have thought when a Tunisian fruit vendor called Mohamed Bouazizi died on Jan 4th last year, 18 days after dousing himself with paint thinner and setting himself alight, it would inspire a series of protests that we now remember as the Arab Spring? Who would have predicted the summer riots or the closure of St Paul’s Cathedral because of the Occupy London encampment? Sir Mervyn King Governor of the Bank of England, at a recent Inflation Report press conference, referring to the ongoing economic crisis remarked: ‘ Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow, let alone next month?’

In our own lives, we will each I dare say have had our own share of surprises, some wonderful and some less so. And we will have kept going, handling them as best we can. So I thought it might be useful to consider God’s take on how to handle the things that life will throw at us in the year ahead. It’s from a prayer sheet I came across recently published by the Wives’ Fellowship, a nation wide Christian organisation. Are you ready? It begins like this:

Good Morning! This is God!

Today I will be handling all your problems.

Please remember that I do not need your help.

If the devil happens to deliver a situation you

cannot handle, DO NOT attempt to resolve it.

Kindly put it in the ‘SFJTD’ (Something For Jesus To Do) box.

It will be addressed in MY time, not YOURS.

Unlikely ----today’s readings

In each of today’s readings, life has taken an unlikely turn and it is God who has the solution.

Isaiah – the Jews are exiles no longer, returned but struggling. Through Isaiah God tells them that in his hands they will be a crown of beauty, a royal diadem. Unlikely though it seems. Unlikely is what God majors in. Paul reminds the Galatians, who are Jewish converts to Christianity that they don’t need to be bound any more to the Jewish law, bound by keeping all their rituals and feast days. God in Jesus has freed them of all that now. Amazing as it is they are no longer God’s slaves but his children. Made possible through Jesus, birth – the Incarnation, God born as a human – of a woman – and also as a Jew – under the law. So he could free them from the law. And the shepherds. Terrified and quaking in the passage just before this. Now they are filled with joy, glorifying and praising God. Why? Because they have had an encounter with God himself, in that baby in the manger.

So use the Jesus box!

When the unlikely occurs in the year ahead, no need to flounder, use the box. Not just when we are terrified, like the shepherds, whose terror motivated them to make haste, leaving their flocks to predators, not just when we’re desperate (if all else fails read the instructions!) but whenever we have a problem. Just use the box!

The Prayer continues

Once the matter is placed into the box, do not

hold onto it or attempt to remove it.

Holding on or removal will delay the resolution of your problem.

If it as a situation that you think you are capable of handling,

please consult me in prayer to be sure that it is the proper resolution.

Greek saying

In other words we can trust God. The ancient Greeks had a saying about the Gods looking down from Olympus and laughing at the plans men make. Well, God looks down on us too, but he doesn’t laugh. It’s different. You see God cares about us – he is in the thick of it with us, helping to bring about a proper resolution that is best for us and our wellbeing.

Christmas card

One of my favourite Christmas cards ever is of a panel from the St Thomas Altar by Master Francke, an artist of 14-15th century. It is of the Nativity. God is looking down from the heavens on the scene, but a) he is looking not on us but on himself and b) he is not laughing but gazing with an expression of love, his hands raised in blessing. That’s Incarnation:  Emmanuel, God with us. God is in it with us. Wanting to involve himself and bring a proper resolution.

Didn’t talk about New Year Resolutions

When we were eating our salt beef sandwiches  – I must ask Bryan and Andrejs after the service if they have made any!!! But may be our New Year resolution can be to use the Jesus box. Oh and the prayer ends:

Because I do not sleep nor do I slumber,

there is no need for you to lose any sleep.

Rest my child. If you need to contact me, I am only a prayer away.

Amen