Whenever I get around to watching TV, I usually go in and ask whoever’s in the room, ‘What are we watching?’ Most men I know have control of that remote! But in our house the remote is actually tied to Christine’s chair! So, was it Christmas evening? Eastenders was on the box and the Dad of the Slater’s (Charlie) got up during his Christmas dinner and made a short speech, “It hasn’t been a great year for us,” he said, “but whatever the good Lord has in plan for us, what I say is, bring it on!”… Bring it on!

Morbidity (that is a word) sets in at this time of year for me. (I’m turning into a miserable ol’ git!) It’s growing older, I know, but I’m worrying about things now that may never happen, when I have enough to keep me going as it is, not just Parish-wise. Yet we have someone in the Parish who has quite a wonderful philosophy. She celebrates her birthday each year, indeed every day of every year, as something to be embraced and revelled in. This year on her birthday (and I mean 2006) it will be twenty years since she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She attends the clinic no longer, but every day since that fateful day she knew of her diagnosis, she sees as a bonus. Something to be enjoyed and embraced. I would love to tell you who it is, but that would be unfair.

I suppose the good thing would be to start off right. Not like someone from last year whose diary started like this: January – Took new scarf back to store because it was too tight. February – Got excited…finished jigsaw puzzle in 6 months…box said “2-4 years”! March – Trapped on escalator for hours…power went out!

Perhaps laughter may be a great medicine, but I have no doubt that the real secret of happiness is being grateful for the things we have, rather than being miserable about the things we don’t have. That’s a sensible and basic philosophy. When Indonesia, and indeed the whole of South East Asia, was commemorating the Tsunami disaster at the beginning of this week (I only really caught a glimpse of it on television) the 11-year-old girl, I think stole the show. Her piece of prose was how the overriding lesson learnt from such a catastrophe was not the power and potentially destructive force of nature, but the compassion and resilience and strength of the human spirit. This time last year we were trying to come to terms with all of this, and then the questions came, especially all those theological ones. Then more disaster struck our world, and then something else happens and something else, until you really get to the stage that you’re fed up asking ‘why’ anymore, and you just want to get on with it! Even the greatest minds have never come up with easy solutions. If they had, we wouldn’t be all sitting here this evening.

I love the story of the Professor of Theology who could speak fluently half a dozen languages like Hebrew, Greek and Latin. You have heard this before! And one evening his students began wondering what language he would use in his prayers to God. Would it be Aramaic or Hebrew or Latin. So, late at night his students crept up to their Professor’s rooms in the University, and they saw him kneeling by his bed saying his prayers; and this is what he said,

“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child;

Pity my simplicity,

Suffer me to come to thee.

Lamb of God, I look to thee,

Thou shalt my example be;

Thou art gentle, meek and mild,

Thou wast once a little child.”

It is in trying to understand this, that real wisdom begins. How grateful we should be.

In the Parish, I think we have had one of our most difficult years. Funerals, yes, as always, and one in particular that none of us will ever forget. I often think that to constantly ask ‘why’ simply leads us into more despair and confusion. Rather than all of that, what we need to do is bathe ourselves in his grace and love. Yes, there is the resilience of the human spirit, which never seems to be crushed, and this doesn’t just come from ‘thin air’. These days our own Church building finds itself in, what I thought was a wonderful expression I heard, a ‘pool of light’. We need to immerse ourselves in it; to let it flow over us and around us; we need to know that, indeed He was but a little child and He knows just how much we need Him.

So God, at the end of the day, whatever you or you natural world has in store for us this year, bring it on! For we know that you are there to hold us up.