Saint John the Evangelist

St Johns and Clayton Brook Churches

Please note the Rt Revd Winstanley has now re located- please contact -- the Curate : Revd Tom Donaghey   01772 497687

Church Wardens          St Johns -- Jean Grindrod       Clayton Brook -- Janette Digney

Verger        Don Harris

The Curate scribbles...

Hi folks
If I have not managed to express the usual New Years reference to you then ‘Happy New Year!’
I know this is going to sound obvious but if we have just entered a new year then it seems to me that we must have just finished an old year. Obvious yet somehow the old year seems to spill into the new one with all its old habits, old pressures, disorders and uncertainties that will inevitably haunt us this year as well – unless of course we do something about it. I guess that’s what New Year resolutions are about, an opportunity to start a fresh approach from an old way to a new approach that holds better prospects, or in greater clarity - ‘A New Year's resolution is a commitment that a person makes to one or more personal goals, projects, or the reforming of a habit. A key element to a New Year's Resolution that sets it apart from other resolutions is that it is made in anticipation of the New Year and new starts. People committing themselves to a New Year's resolution generally plan to do so for the whole following year. This lifestyle change is generally interpreted as advantageous.’ However, a study by Richard Wisemen from the University of Bristol involving 3,000 people showed that 88% of those who set New Year resolutions fail, despite the fact that 52% of the study's participants were confident of success at the beginning.

This report begs the question which I am bound to ask - how many of you have already broken your resolution? I made the all important resolution of giving up cakes and biscuits (not chocolate) and have so far held out. Having said that I am starting to convince myself that a cream doughnut is not a cake, and nor is flapjack! Don’t be so hard on yourself if you have broken them, at least you tried. More and more people just don’t bother these days because they know they can’t keep them. Whatever choice we made at New Year, to do a resolution and broken it or not bother at all, I really believe an opportunity to do something positive, or advantageous (as the statement suggests) has gone amiss. If I might proffer a reality here, perhaps we are setting impossible promises on ourselves. If we made simple yet effective commitments that were more realistic and manageable, we might find the reward of keeping them well worthwhile.

In many ways it is like starting a new beginning with God, the old self is gone and a new opportunity to start again gives us the chance to make a fresh commitment to the rest of our lives. In similar ways we make efforts and set goals to start a new life with Christ and promise to be as faithful and true as we can. Yet, like resolutions, we fail to keep them because that’s the way we are, a fallen people without a hope of being right with God, as the old self spills into the new, and so perhaps there are many aspects of our life in which we just don’t bother to surrender to God. Nevertheless through Christ’s invite to follow him he shows us realistic ways of how to keep our promises in more practical and sensible ways. If we were to all make two or three fresh resolutions through our Christian faith to keep for the year, what a difference it would make to you, to us, to others and to our Father in heaven, as we break unhelpful habits, set personal and achievable goals that pledges ourselves to put things right with God.

It’s not too late to make one or two resolutions now for this year, and it might be to simply read more of your Bible - a passage every day, or even to buy yourself a Bible, or be more pleasant to your neighbour and so on...the suggestions are endless it’s down to you...and God. Why not try to get others involved too as you commit your resolutions to one another thus the support and encouragement keeps us going, and that’s the strength behind making and keeping promises, as Frank Ra writes "Resolutions are more sustainable when shared, both in terms of with whom you share the benefits of your resolution, and with whom you share the path of maintaining your resolution. Peer-support makes a difference in success rate with new year's resolutions".

God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Heb 11:40)

Rev Tom

 

>Click these links to our two Church Schools.

www.whittle-le-woods.lancsngfl.ac.uk                               www.clayton-le-woods.lancs.sch.uk

 

Thought for the week

" From now on I will tell you of new things, of hidden things unknown to you. They are created now, not long ago; you have not heard of them before today" (Isaiah 48:6-7

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Women's Retreat weekend. Irene Leak is holding a retreat from the 17th - 19th February at Whalley Abbey. Please click on the link below for more details or see Tom
www.stillwatersministries.org.uk