I wonder what you think of when you look forward to the year 2022. There are some key sporting events. The Football World Cup is in Qatar in November 2022. The Commonwealth Games are in Birmingham in July 2022. The Queen will celebrate her Platinum Jubilee, the first British monarch to reach this milestone. She will have completed seventy years of service, having acceded to the throne on 6th February 1952 when Her Majesty was 25 years old. This is a remarkable achievement; not many people achieve fifty years of service let alone seventy years. Whatever you may think of the Queen you cannot question her work and service. Celebrations are planned for an extended bank holiday, from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th June, which will provide an opportunity for communities and people throughout the United Kingdom to come together to celebrate the historic milestone. The late May bank holiday has moved again to Thursday 2nd June and there is also an additional Bank Holiday on Friday 3rd June
Perhaps you are looking forward to more personal milestones in 2022, like a family wedding or a significant birthday, be it a small number like one or two, or perhaps a larger number like twenty one or more! These celebrations will hold great significance and will hopefully allow time for celebrations with family and friends. It feels that we need some positive things to look forward to this coming year. The last eighteen months have been so gloomy and worrying for all of us.
The New Year allows us to put the past year behind us and to move into the new future. How we will do in the coming year very often depends on our expectations and plans. It is clear without any ambition it is unlikely that we will achieve very much. It is only through hard work in making our plans bear fruit that we change anything. It would be unimaginable to leave celebrations of the Platinum Jubilee to the last minute and hope it will sort itself out. You will not be surprised that plans are already in place for Trooping the Colour, a Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s and a Party at the Palace to name just a few events. It will need a lot of organisation and hard work. The celebration only comes as a result of bringing the planning of these events to fruition. What is interesting to me is that our relationship with God is always waiting for us to accept an invitation to take part. Like most things, if you ignore it and say you will do it later, it never gets better, in fact it is more likely that it gets more difficult.
We are all challenged to engage with this new year and our life situation. Will we be able to make this year a better one? For that to happen we need to be able to enjoy the relationships with our family and friends. So much of what makes us happy is do with good relationships. Our relationship with God is a good place to start to make a difference in our outlook and expectations.
