...and a Happy New Year!

All New Years are times of hope, and this one particularly. I am writing at the end of November 2011 and I don't think I can remember a year so full of disasters and bad or just gloomy news – earthquakes, tsunamis, famines, drought and endless predictions of financial melt-down. One newspaper suggested that 2011 had used up all the supply of news for the next decade – what was there left to happen?

It's not really like that, of course. 2012 won't be an easy year if you are looking for a job, but this country is still one of the best places in the world to live. 2012 will bring us the Olympic Games in London for the first time since 1948 and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, as well as more local events like the 50th anniversary of the new Coventry Cathedral, completed and consecrated in May 1962. We hope the Queen may be coming to mark the occasion as she did 50 years ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury is definitely coming. At the personal level, my wife and I look forward to our Golden Wedding.

Internationally we can hope and pray for the new movements in the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring, or the Arab Awakening. What courage those people have shown in their struggle against huge odds to get rid of dictators and rulers who allow no kind of dissent or protest, and who invariably line their own pockets and those of their families with money that belongs to their people. There is great reason to hope for the world out there. As I write, even the hard-line generals who govern Myanmar (as Burma has been called since 1989) are beginning to allow the great-hearted Nobel prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi a measure of real political freedom after keeping her under house-arrest for 15 years.

If you were to ask many people in the world what were their hopes for 2012 what would you hear? My wife and I are part of a team from St Peter's who knock on doors in Wellesbourne street by street, and tell people that we are praying for that street that month, and is there anything in particular they would like us to pray for? (See the back page of this issue) Some have particular personal concerns like a sick relative or their own health, but many will say things like ‘Oh well, we are OK. We have so much, don't we, compared to many? But we should pray for peace in the world, bringing the soldiers back from Afghanistan, and that. Oh yes, and for young people, jobs, and a place to live.’

I'll buy all of that. And I doubt if you would hear anything very different if you asked the same question in Poland or Pakistan or Papua New Guinea or Peru. So Happy New Year! Oh, and don't forget to pray.

Christopher Lamb

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