Welcome to 2019! At the start of the year, my Bible reading plan (Bible In One Year) is re-set and I start again to read through the whole Bible throughout the year, reading a portion from the Old Testament, a portion from the New Testament and a portion from the book of Psalms or Proverbs each day. Today, as I focussed again on ‘the start’, God’s amazing act of creation, and on the genealogy of Jesus (that link between the Old Testament and the New Testament), it struck me how arbitrary our dating and timing systems are! Yesterday I was in Nehemiah and Revelation; now I’m back to Genesis and Matthew!
From midday yesterday (New Year’s Eve), I was receiving greetings from friends in Australia wishing me a ‘Happy New Year’. Friends in Canada and the U.S.A. haven’t yet started sending me greetings (they’re obviously not up early and didn’t stay up to ‘see in’ the New Year). This is all to do with time zones and meridians, which I struggle to understand! In the creation account in Genesis 1, we are told ‘there was evening and there was morning – the first day’ (Gen 1:5) and the Jewish practice is to count the start of the day as nightfall, rather than at midnight, as we do. In the past, even the time varied from one part of the country to another, which obviously makes life very complicated if you’re trying to arrange meetings at set times!
Whatever part of the world we’re in or whatever system of dating and timing we’re using, for most of us reading this, today is the first day of 2019 and we traditionally spend time on this day (a public holiday) reflecting on what has gone and pondering what lies ahead. As a church, we choose to spend a part of this day together, at our New Year’s Day party. If you’re free at 4 p.m., do join us for food, fellowship, fun and games. It’s our way of acknowledging that we are part of God’s family and that this year is another year to journey, not only with God, but also with each other. We don’t know what lies ahead in the future, but we do know God has promised to be with us, to lead us and guide us and to bless us and so we walk on in faith, secure in His love.
