Thought For The Day: Time to reboot and reconsider choices

MY indulgence is to trust that the blessings of Christmas will bring you hope, peace and joy in 2025.

I give myself permission to be seasonal because the date to celebrate Christmas varies in different denominations. It’s all about which calendar is used — Julian or Gregorian.

In the Anglican tradition we reached The Epiphany on January 6, a festival marking an experience of spiritual revelation. In this case, it is the revelation of Jesus to the world, the world represented by the magi coming from other cultures to seek the new leader heralded by a new star.

I would like to share some recent examples of the penny dropping epiphanies that have impacted my perspectives.

In the Shiplake, Dunsden and Harpsden United Benefice, where I minister, we have a vacancy because the rector has moved to Chester diocese. As we manage our journey through the processes of an interregnum I am struck by the contrast between those legal and organisational procedures and the lively ongoing life of people of faith — worshipping, loving one another, serving in the community, sharing what it means to follow Jesus in daily life. That’s church on a mission, creatively adapting to a new situation.

Then there was New Year’s Eve which I marked with family in New Zealand. I wasn’t there in person.

I was “with” them thanks to the internet. Having shared the Auckland fireworks I travelled the world getting closer to home but closer to bedtime too.

That calendar, time, date issue again — it is always midnight somewhere so I went to bed. But a new year on January 1 — that’s a man-made construct in that the rhythm of our orbit of the sun might draw us more naturally to a solstice or equinox. What other cultural norms do I buy into rather than the more natural, more authentic?

New Year’s Day came, inevitably. I had failed to notice the automatic entry in the church notices that first Wednesdays have a Holy Communion with anointing for healing and wholeness, not the closure of a bank holiday.

We have a 24/7 God. Why not honour my diary mistake? So we did. We met, we worshipped, we communed, we laid ourselves and 2025 into God’s good purposes.

For me, all three of my mini epiphanies illustrate the core of our choices — the man-made and cultural norms or decisions based on other values, other reasons.

Apparent mistakes or differences were transformed into moments to reboot my thinking, change the programming that influences me, offer a new way to be me.

Perhaps resolution has been forced upon me — to consider why and what is real.

Happy new you.