Dear Friends,

What a welcome to 2010! I will never again sing ‘Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow’. Being fairly ancient, I remember the snow of 1947 when it came over the top of my wellington boots. 1963 was almost as bad. Olive and I inspected our half built semi in Hertfordshire with no roof and snow in the basement at temperatures well below minus 27C – well, just a slight exaggeration!

Strange as it may seem, magazine predictions for this year don’t mention snow. They tell me: ‘The future starts here. Hold on tight: modern living is moving into the “now”, with a constantly updated stream of real time information and virtual interaction’. I am advised to think twitter, buzz, breaking news and rapid, mobile response.

Are you keeping up? How about parasitic shoes? These are apparently already in prototype; shoes that harvest energy as you walk, generating electrical power for charging your pods and mobs.

Others predict that ‘Love is the new happiness’ with workshops on how love can be applied to all, and ‘mass-mingling’ where the social network goes hypersocial or … enough of this.

I am writing this at the beginning of a decision year for us at Sevenoaks URC. We have to make up our minds about what sort of church we really want to be. We have to decide how we determine which of our two church buildings to keep. I am hoping that we can do this prayerfully, setting aside our own personal preferences.

We certainly have moved into the ‘now’, that is a fact, not a prediction. Peter tells us how to overcome our personal desires. He writes in 1 Peter Chapter 1 verse 13:

‘Therefore, prepare your minds for action, be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.’

For the Christian, love certainly is the ‘new happiness’, not in the sensationalism of the New Year magazine articles but in the love that Jesus taught us and Paul expressed so perfectly in his letter to the Corinthians:

‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.’

For us, that is not a prediction - that is a fact.

God bless,

Lionel