Pause for Thought: New Year brings real hope for us all and is a gift from God

Winter may not be over – by some reckoning it's only just beginning – but signs of hope are in the air. And in the ground too, as green shoots emerge from buried bulbs.

As the winter solstice passes, our calendars tell us that a new year is dawning. There is nothing inevitable about the year starting just then, but throughout the world, it is the moment when, conventionally, a new number appears on the calendar.

This year, the gloomy experience of Covid-19 and the hope of a vaccine, not to mention the final break with the European Union, make the transition from 2020 to 2021 seem particularly significant.

Midnight on December 31 is a moment to reflect on the events and experiences of the past year and to look ahead to the future, with a mixture of emotions. Anxieties and hopes mingle. Resolutions are made, normally, it must be admitted, quickly broken.

The New Year draws people together. People forget their differences to gather together, setting off fireworks, joining hands, taking “a cup of kindness” and singing Auld Lang Syne - in non-pandemic years at least.

There are negative feelings too – sorrow at lost relationships; anxiety about the future of our planet.

Chasing the star of Bethlehem

Nature continues to take its inevitable course, mindless of us, our calendars and our traditions. We are caught up in it, with no way of escape. Perhaps that is why, for many, the celebration is hidden behind an alcoholic haze.

Can it really be, though, that there is no deeper meaning behind the natural forces governing the earth's cycle around the sun? That our feelings of joy and sorrow, like all our hopes and dreams, will, like us, quickly vanish into a dark empty nothing? That our sense of community with one another is only a meaningless mechanism to help the survival of our species?

Our hopes for the future can be be founded on more than self-centred, wishful thinking. We are not just a meaningless life form existing on the surface of a planet spinning around an unremarkable star in the vastness of space.

Our hopes can rest on the reality of God, and our lives in time and space can be recognized and welcomed as God's gifts. The choice of December 25 as the day to remember the birth of Jesus Christ points us to a truth that can bring us confidence for this or any New Year.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​