Hope for a new dawn for each of us in 2022 - a new year message from the Rector of Buckingham

As 2021 has become 2022 we will all be reflecting on the past and wondering about the future.

There’ll be plenty of the usual resolutions like getting fit, eating less and perhaps looking for a new job or relationship.

The weirdness of the last year will have had its good bits and probably lots of bad bits.

Good bits, for me, included having family unexpectedly at home for periods of lockdown and going from ‘couch to 5k’.

The bad bits have included this awful division we all know exists between those who are very anxious about getting Covid and want facemasks and isolation and lockdowns and those who are not at all anxious and want to get on with their lives.

In many respects, this division is worse than we went through with Brexiteers and Remainers.

Whatever our view, as things get tougher, we must do our very best to be nice and respectful of each other even if we disagree.

But when things do get really tough, where can we turn for comfort and strength?

When my first wife and our baby son were killed in a car accident, I had no more than the formal trappings of religion.

But in my grief I began to read the Bible and I became captivated by this person, Jesus, this incredible teacher, this miracle worker, this man who experienced everything we experience in this life, and more - death, bereavement, pain, joy, happiness.

Then I found a strange sense of peace as I began to accept Jesus into my life, and that transformed my life 26 years ago, as it can yours in 2022.

The Queen has had a tough year, losing her husband of 73 years.

In her Christmas message, she said that "in the birth of a child (Jesus) there is a new dawn with endless potential”.

We must hope and pray that 2022 will offer each of us a new dawn with endless potential.

Another monarch, George VI, gave this wonderful vision in his 1939 Christmas broadcast, when a far bigger fear gripped this nation: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.”

That’s what the people of the war years did, and it’s my key message for us at the start of 2022.