Happy New Year – the Sanctuary is back online rather later than most owing to a house move, but our time of non-communication has provided us with an interesting chance to reflect on the various messages we’ve received from sales sites, social justice organisations, our politicians, and the media.
We’ll be back to our usual posts next week, with new resources on the themes of church unity and getting ready for Lent due to be published shortly. But for now, we wanted to share a belated new year thought…
It seems that at the start of another year which looks set to bring significant challenges, there have been two types of perspective communicated in the myriad of new year messages we have seen. One has been focused on a continuing, and increasing, climate of cuts and tightened belts, and fear is written between its lines.
The other, rarer, perspective, has brought us back to creative and sacrificial acts of hope and faith.
At the start of 2012, we’d like to give thanks for the ongoing faithful commitment of many organisations that walk with poor communities, such as Christian Aid and Christians Against Poverty, and who continue to be a prophetic voice reminding us that it is always the poorest who are the hardest hit.
It’s our prayerful resolution to keep trying to follow their example in always trying to look beyond the impacts on our own lives, to express love to others – especially the global poor.
We’d also like to celebrate new and creative initiatives such as 24:7 Prayer and Alpha’s year of prayer for 2012 – Kingdom Come – and also the charity Acts 435, both of which express a heart-felt commitment to rise up and be the church our world so desperately needs us to be.
We pray that we too will have the courage, compassion and conviction to follow this “upward call” as we press on to love God, bless his church, and partner with him in his transformation of our world.