Happy New Year Messages

Happy New Year message from the Pastor

Dear Friends   

Here we are again the start of a new year – 2025. Looking back on 2024 it was the year I retired from working and yet I seem to be busier than ever!

Christmas and the New Year are always a time of reflection, and to use my Christmas morning word, to ponder.  As you look back over 2024, I wonder what your highlights will be, what things would you have done differently and where did God fit into your life.  

The one message of Christmas is that God breaks into our lives in the most unexpected ways, if only we open our eyes to see those ways and to welcome Him into our hearts. The Shepherds believed the angels and ran to see Jesus and leaving the stable they knew their lives would never be the same again. The Wise Men travelled for around two years, searching and looking and working out where He would be. Had they not looked up, they would not have seen the star, nor would they have followed it. Their reward was to kneel before Jesus and offer to Him the greatest gifts that they could.

We, like the shepherds and the kings need to believe when we hear, act on our instructions and then, we will see Jesus and our lives will never be the same again. Like the kings we have to look upwards, look around us and see the signs that are there, that point us to Jesus. We need to follow those signs until we find Him and then we need to give him the best of our gifts, our humble thankful hearts. 

May 2025, bring you joy and happiness and a life filled with the Spirit of God.

Pastor Julie Newitt  

New Year Message from Gavin and Mary

In Pilgrim’s Progress you will recall the famous storyline where Christian could not see the gate that was pointed out to him. He could however see the light ahead and by following that light he would arrive at the gate.

The message here should be our New Year message to one another, to go forward and follow that light.

David Livingstone, the great African explorer, was asked where he was willing to go. He answered “Anywhere as long as it is forward”.

The daunting thing about life is so often at a year’s end we are no further on than the year before.

We still have our own faults, shortcomings and making the same mistakes. So as the New Year approaches let us, like David Livingstone, resolve to go forward and onwards towards that light.