Uniting
WE have just ended another year and started a brand new one, more or less.
It’s that time of looking back and perhaps making resolutions for the future.
A time often of considering More or less. More exercise, less food and/or drink; less about self, more consideration of others; more doing, less procrastination; the list can go on and on.
How are you going with yours? Many of such good intentions don’t seem to last too far into the year, though, if we are honest.
St Paul wrote about it almost 2000 years ago in Romans chapter 7 saying: the good that I want to do I don’t end up doing but the things I want to give up are the very things I do.
He was very frustrated as he definitely wanted to do the right thing so he ended up writing in verses 24, 25: “What an unhappy man I am! Who will rescue me? Thanks be to God, who does this through our Lord Jesus Christ!”
We have heard and sung about the baby Jesus recently but last Sunday in our service at 10am as we commenced a New Year hearing from the start of John’s gospel that, “Before the world was created, the Word already existed; he was with God, and he was the same as God” and “The Word became a human and being full of grace and truth, lived among us.”
This is the Jesus who can help us through whatever 2023 brings.
For this, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
So how about we learn more of him and stress less about things around us, worship more and worry less, give more of ourselves and ask less of others, blame others less and forgive them more for we can never know what others are really going through.
Remember, Jesus forgives you and me. Remember if you are unable to attend church due to COVID concerns or other reasons, our ministers are able to email or deliver printed at-home services as well as offer Zoom services from one of our regional team worship venues.
Reminder: men’s lunch is at 12 noon on the first Tuesday of each month at the RSL.
The UC Adult Fellowship is the fourth Monday of each month at 9.30am. Wishing you all a blessed New Year.
