New Year Resolutions
On Sunday I was preaching at Abbots Langley Methodist Church. This Sunday, the first after Epiphany, is usually set up to talk about the baptism of Christ and this was indeed one of the set lessons for the day. However, when I looked at all the lectionary readings together the one characteristic that came through for me and that I chose to preach on was the use of voices. You can read my sermon here (PDF).
Abbots Langley have a different way of having children in the service in that they only come in at the end having spent the rest of the time in their Junior Church classes. They’d only the two children on Sunday and they’d been talking about resolutions in their class and had produced three differently coloured heart shapes on which to write resolutions. On the pink heart they had to write a resolution that they wanted to make for themselves. On the blue heart they had to think of a resolution that they wanted someone else to make that would make their lives better. On the yellow heart they had to make a resolution that they would make that would make the life of someone else better. I thought this was a great take on making resolutions and perhaps it’s something that should be encouraged more often, not just thinking about what we want for ourselves but what others want from us and what we want from others.