New Year, New Friends
I was looking back through my diary a few days ago and the thing that struck me was the deaths of good people in the past year. I thanked God for each one of them.
It will be all the more difficult to go into this New Year without these stable and supportive friends. Of course, new and younger people are rising up everywhere eager to take their place with fresh energy and insight. But we do miss true friends who have journeyed with us over the past years.
Shortly, my encyclopedia year book will arrive outlining everything significant that happened in the past year. One of the first sections I always read is called simply, “Obituaries” which gives a potted history of the life and work of several hundred significant people who have died in the past year. We remember with gratitude their contribution to our world and to our lives.
The wonderful thing about the New Year, is that we do not know now who are those new people and fresh friends who will rise up and join with us.
This year I will make some new friends who will become the most wonderful people I know in my whole life – the only trouble is I do not know now who they are. I need only be friendly, and God will bring them across my path. Great loss is replaced with wonderful new opportunities.
As one man Cleland B. McAfee, wrote “God make your year a happy one. Not by shielding you from all sorrow and pain, but by strengthening you to bear it when it comes. Not by making your path easy, but by making you sturdy enough to tread any path, not by taking hardships from you, but by taking all cowardice and fear from your heart.
Not by granting you unbroken sunshine, but by keeping your face bright even in the shadows. Not by making your life always pleasant, but by showing you where man and His cause need you most and by making you zealous and concerned to be there and help. Not by keeping you from battle, but by bringing you off every field more than conquerors through Him who loves us.”
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC