All Things New

 Lamentations 3:22-24 (NRSV) —

‘ The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’’

Happy New Year! And welcome to Gas Street Daily Devotionals for 2023!

We’re already more than a week into January, the first month of the year ever since it was fixed by the Romans in around 450 BC. They called it after their mythical god Janus, who had two faces – one to look back to the past and one to look forward to the future. We can all look back, reflecting that the past few years have been a very mixed bag, with one crisis following another (but many blessings too!). Every year brings its own surprises - who would have predicted the pandemic, the Ukraine war, inflation, fuel shortages?

As we try to look forward – what will 2023 hold for me, for my family, for our church, for our world? – we need to recall the words of the great physicist Niels Bohr: 'it is exceedingly difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future'(!)

All of which means that amid the changes and chances of our world, we need to keep our grip on what is unchanging – 'the steadfast love of the Lord which never ceases, and his mercies that never come to an end'. In the Letter to the Hebrews (13:8) we are reminded: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.’

So perhaps some appropriate words to start the year for us are those quoted by King George VI in his Christmas broadcast of 1939, in the shadow of the second world war: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’

Prayer — Lord, as we begin this new year help us to trust in your unchanging love, and to know your mercies which are new every morning.