Time to move on?

As we do every year, as a new year begins we start to make plans, to think about all the things we weren’t able to do, places we weren’t able to go to…we start to move on with our lives. This new year especially, I’m sure all of us are hoping that 2021 will see a return to something like the sort of ‘normality’ we were used to before the dreadful Covid-19 pandemic wreaked its havoc on lives around the world. The announcement of effective vaccines last November will surely have boosted those hopes.
 
But I’m also sure that during the past months of lockdown and distancing from others, some of us might have found ourselves looking inwards at our lives and even making changes to how we think and feel, not just about ourselves but about others as well: our relationships, our values.   So could this new year be a time to move on in a different way? How many of us, for instance, still carry the burden of deepseated hurt from someone or something in our past? Forgiving is sometimes incredibly hard to do – I know from personal experience. But once we have crossed the boundary between holding on to whatever it is that we find so hard to forgive and being willing at least to begin the process of forgiving we may just find that our burden becomes progressively lighter.
 
If the past year has taught us anything it is surely that life is precious. So why not take this opportunity of a new year to move on personally, to embrace life as it is, not as it was.
 
Whatever this new year has in store, my hope and prayer for all of us is that it will be a happy and fulfilling one.
Revd Gary Williamson