Happy New Year! What are you most looking forward to this year?
Perhaps a family celebration, milestone event, a holiday, or the start of something new.

The new year marks the beginning of your next chapter, and you get to write it! Everyday we have decisions to make on how we feel, how we react, what we want to do, wear, eat, think and say. How will you be spending your time? Is there a task you’re avoiding? What is most important to you? What things in your life or habits do you want to change? How do you want to feel?

At Christmas we created a Tree of Hope as part of the Christmas Tree Festival down at West Moors URC. It was humbling to read the different hopes people had written, most of them feelings, something that can’t be bought but instead grown and nurtured over time through love, hope, faith and perseverance; belonging, acceptance, happiness, family, friends, love, joy, equality, end to climate change, restoration, direction, good physical and mental health,
wellbeing, peace, understanding…

How wonderful the world will be when these hopes burst into full bloom! Perhaps a glimpse and foretaste of heaven in our time.

“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelation 21: 3b-4