God is with us

Frequently, at this time of year, I hear comments such as: 'Well, let's hope the New Year is a better one!' or 'Thank God I can put last year behind me!’

  No doubt many of us will look back on 2005 with a great degree of sadness.  We will remember the London Bombings, the war in Iraq, the Earthquakes and even the Hemel Hempstead explosion and subsequent fire.  We will also remember those personal moments of sadness and discomfort - sometimes borne alone and some times shared with friends - and we will forever associate them with 2005, fervently praying that neither we nor anyone else will have to experience such things in 2006.

  Often it is the more painful memories which seem to linger with us the longest.  We tend not to remember quite so vividly the good events of the passing year - like the public support for the Make Poverty History Campaign, England winning the Ashes, London being awarded the Olympic Games, the 60th Anniversary of the ending of the Second World War and so on.

  We don't remember quite so well those moments when we have experienced gifts of love, words of peace and comfort, acts of kindness and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

  There is something in our humaness which brings our pain and suffering more to the fore than other experiences and this leads us to judge the past year harshly and want 'a better year than last year'.

  But for God, each year is his year. God is active in our lives throughout all of each and every year: rejoicing with us, crying with us, supporting us, carrying us, chastising us, seeing us through the good and the bad times.  His love for us never changes, even though our personal circumstances do.

  Psalm 145 :13b-16(NIV) says: ‘The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving towards all he has made.  The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.  The eyes of all look up to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.  You open your hand satisfy the desires of every living thing.’

  We may have different experiences in the coming year, but this truth is constant: the faithfulness of the Lord never changes. He meets our every need, whenever and whatever that is.

  He did it in 2005. We know that he will also do it in 2006.

by Graham Clarke.