Rev Dr David Latimer: Love God and each other
Beginning on Tuesday 1st January everybody will open a new book that will be filled with blank pages.
The title of this book is Opportunity and the first page is called New Year’s Day.
The New Year is the commencement of a new era. Unquestionably, it’s the best time to start everything from scratch – new dreams, new visions, new relationships, new commitment, new thinking and even a new way of living.
What was done or not done during the past year cannot be altered; it’s gone and gone forever. Sadly, there is nothing any of us can do about the past and that’s because none of us can bring time back!
During her first visit to Ireland in 2011 Her Majesty, The Queen, very helpfully expressed how so many of us perceive the past when she said, ‘with the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things that we wish had been done differently or not at all.’ That being so, each of us can now resolve to begin writing a new story on every page of a 365 page book and we can do that during the hours, days, weeks and months of the New Year that extend out into the future.
Standing, as we are, on the threshold of two thousand and thirteen, it is true to say that not one of us can see too far ahead. The road into the future could turn out to be rough and it could have confusing turns, bumpy sections to cross and hills to climb. Given our uncertainty about everything other than the present leads us to inquire if, there is anything that allows us to believe, 2013 can be the year when we start stepping out of our comfort zones, to allow new things to take place that will make our city a better and a brighter place for all?
Happily, a piece of useful advice available to each of us living in the myriad of avenues, estates, parks, roads and streets on either side of the Foyle is …… ‘lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.’ (Proverbs Chapter 3, verses 5 and 6).
Undeniably this assures us that as we travel through life, where intermittently we’re confronted with confusion and often are at a loss as to which way is the right way, God exists to guide us. Whether it’s a business, church, college, community centre, factory, hospice, hospital, nursing home, school, man, woman, boy or girl, God’s Divine guidance is available and because it’s Divine it is infallible and unerring guidance.
Consequently, as we cautiously open the book called Opportunity at the start of another New Year and proceed to write a new story on each of the 365 blank pages, it’s worth remembering that when the time comes that we are stripped to bare bones before the Divine and facing Eternity, we will understand that the only law we were meant to follow was to love God, ourselves an deach other. Perhaps this will persuade us all to do better in 2013!
Happy New Year.
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Weather for Londonderry
Saturday 18 May 2013
Today
Heavy rain
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