Join in our all age services and parish events. Have a peek inside St Andrew's. We look forward to meeting you! Curate Writes | January 2010 The beginning of a new year is always a cause for reflection of the past and a time for consideration of the future. This year we move into a new decade too and you may, like me, be wondering how the past ten years have slid past so quickly. Is it really that long ago that we marked the beginning of the new millennium with so much celebration and expectation? We will all be carrying memories; some good, some difficult, some happy, some marked with sadness and some that have possibly changed the direction of our lives and our living. The long view offers up a more balanced recollection and helps us as we meet the challenges that tomorrow will undoubtedly bring. It is a good time to gather up all the kindnesses and encouragements we have been given with a grateful heart. But, as this past year draws to its close, there has been a palpable feeling that this is also the ending of an era. The surviving participants of the First World War have died; their life experience is now history. Their passing has touched many people; their resolution of ‘never again’ has once more been brought clearly before us. We step from one year into another in a second; we carry the experiences of yesterday into the challenges of tomorrow. We intend to do better and hope to be better; we long for the ‘healing of the nations’. Seventy years ago, in 1939, King George VI made his renowned Christmas broadcast to the nation as it faced an unknown future. He included these (now) well known words; they are good to hear again…. I said to the Man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown’. And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’ So I went forth and finding the hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And he led me towards  the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.                                                             ~ Minnie Louise Haskins ~ Joy Revd Joy Lievesley