'For all that has been, thank you; for all that is to be, yes'
A New-Year message to readers
Peter Carruthers
As we say farewell to 2023 and welcome 2024, it is a time to look back, say thank you and plan ahead.
Thanks to all of you who have ‘liked’ and commented (both online and via email) on the articles here. The ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ have been a huge encouragement and a spur to carry on. Please keep them coming.
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Many thanks to my fellow author, John Wibberley. John’s vivid articles bring to life both the seasons and the farming year, and the words of scripture, and help us to see the connection.
John and I will continue to write in coming year. We hope also to recruit some new contributors. We shall continue with the several themes we have explored over the last year or so. In addition, we plan to publish more about rural life, faith and church, and, hopefully, to share some ‘good-news stories’.
Our aims here are not just to interest and inform, but also to encourage and edify. Our hope is that Village Link Online will help us encounter the Lord in His creation and His word (Psalm 19) and ‘stir us up to love (for the Lord and one another) and good works’ (Hebrews 10.24).
This site was launched in August 2022. It was originally intended as a home for articles that would also be published in the print editions of Village Link or that would hitherto have been published in the Blog section on our website. However, we have since terminated the print version of Village Link (interest was not enough to justify the costs) and taken our Wordpress website offline for the moment. At present, Village Link Online, therefore, combines all our online communications.
Village Hope is going through a time of change and transition, and we expect to be taking some new directions in the year ahead. We shall post more on this in due course.
The ending of another year marks the passage of time and reminds us to “number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12), to “walk in wisdom and redeem the time because the days are evil” (Colossians 4:5; Ephesians 3:6). And, as Christians and citizens today, we look back on very turbulent times in our churches and nations over recent years and we look forward to an uncertain and ominous future.
Maybe the words of my title can help us here. They are those of Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961), the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. They urge us to affirm the past and embrace the future, to look back with gratitude for all God has done, and to welcome whatever He plans for our future. With the 18C hymn writer, Joseph Hart we can “praise Him for all that is past, and trust Him for all that’s to come”.
One of the best known more recent hymns for a new year is Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith’s, ‘Lord, for the years’. The hymn urges us to thank the Lord "for the years His love has kept and guided”, to praise Him for His word, and to pray for our nation and for the world. It closes with a prayer for ourselves to be able to put the past behind us and put our futures in His hands.
Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us - self on the cross and Christ upon the throne, past put behind us, for the future take us: Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.
You can read the whole hymn here, and listen to it here. At the end of 2020, Bishop Timothy made a short film in which he read and commented on the hymn (which he had written 50 years previously); you can watch it here.
A very Happy New Year!
I found this very encouraging, thank you