Anglican Bishop of Portsmouth says 2021 begins 'full of hope'

Probably we shall also spend the first weekend of 2021 close to home, venturing out only for essential reasons. Celebrations, parties with friends, high street sale shopping, sports matches and so much else that we associate with this time of year are not possible.

One thing doesn’t change for New Year 2021. We begin the new year with Hope.

Most obviously we are hopeful that the brilliant development of Covid vaccines will enable a mass vaccination programme here and throughout the world that will free us from the fear and limitations that dominated last year. We are hopeful of an easing of the restrictions we have been required to follow or needed to take for our own health and the wellbeing of our communities.

There are other hopeful signs too. We are inspired by the commitment of so many who have worked so devotedly and skilfully in our community. Among them are those in the NHS, parcel van drivers, shopworkers and teachers, and those administering vaccines and tests. Volunteers and neighbours as well have shown care and kindness, including those who have staffed foodbanks and cared for the most vulnerable. So also those who have continued to make church and religious worship possible and available online, by phone, and through the letterbox, as well as in church, temple, mosque and synagogue. Those of us most comfortable and least threatened by fear, uncertainty and anxiety owe so much to them. They give us hope.

The Christmas season, which lasts through the first week of the new year, is a time of hope. Jesus’ birth, more than the birth of any child, brings promise and hope. This is not a wishful thinking kind of hope, nor warm words to console or to cajole us into believing something better is soon to occur. Christmas is a real story where things happen less than perfectly and do not quickly resolve well.

The holy family receives, in a cattle shed, the visits of people as diverse as itinerant untrusted shepherds and rich foreign potentates, but then must flee as other young children are innocently slaughtered. Here is not a shallow hope of release from restrictions and tiers but a deep and lasting hope grounded in the realities we all face.

Hope came down at Christmas. Hope is seen through the simplicity of a frail and vulnerable hours-old child; in the poverty of an animal’s feeding trough as a cradle; in the gentle bonding touch of a mother, in the humble worship of rough shepherds and rich grandees.

Whatever the uncertainties you face at the turn of the year, whatever the frustrations you have but try to disguise, we can begin this new year with hope. Our hope is founded on God’s solidarity with us as Jesus is born for us. Hope is strengthened by the scientific advances which are bringing us vaccines. Hope is raised as we honour the selfless professional and personal care and work of our fellow men and women.

We regret we can’t welcome 2021 as we’d like. But we begin 2021 full of hope.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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