Rector’s Reflections
Friday 10th January 2025
Some Thoughts for the Beginning of a New Year
Today is the third and final instalment in a short series of reflections looking at how we might make some spiritual preparations for the start of a new year. We have been looking at the image of a seed. We have seen how a seed can be seen as a symbol of new beginnings in our lives. God is a God of new beginnings, and He wishes to plant and nurture new beginnings in our own lives. Some of these new beginnings are already there, and we can see and feel their presence in our lives. Others are also there, but they lie hidden, and it will take some months or even years of patient waiting before they emerge into view. The start of new year is a good time to be on the lookout for the signs of the new beginnings in our lives.
But we have also seen that there needs to be somewhere suitable for the seed to grow. Sometimes it can be hard for God to find a welcome in our lives. When we pause a moment and reflect on how we spending our time, we might well find that for all practical purposes we have squeezed God out of our lives, either intentionally or unintentionally. So we might well take a moment or two to think how we might make some space for God. It doesn’t have to be a burden- God understands how busy we are. But 15 minutes a day set aside for quality time for God is likely to be transformative for our own lives, and for our relationships with others. If 15 minutes seems impossible, we can start with 5 minutes, and then try to build it up from there.
But there are other aspects to the image of a seed. There can be dangers in applying the image of seed to our spiritual life. We can assume that everything is up to our human effort and skill: we plant the seed, and so we can assume that we are the creators of the new life which ensues. We can also fail to appreciate the extent to which the sowing and nurturing of new life is actually a team effort.
St. Paul was aware of these dangers, and mentions them in a section of his 1st Letter to the Corinthians. There were those among the Christian community in Corinth who creating divisions among the fellowship, promoting the party of Paul and the party of Apollos.. Paul needed to remind them that he and Apollos worked together as a team: Paul had planted the seed of the gospel among them, and Apollos helped it to grow and to flourish. But neither Paul nor Apollos were responsible for the new life which came from the preaching of the gospel: this new life came from God Himself, and Paul and Apollos were simply God’s agents.
This is the passage in question: “ Can you not see that while there is jealousy and strife among you, you are living on the purely human level of your lower nature? When one says, “I am Paul’s man”, and another, “I am for Apollos”, are you not all too human? After all, what is Apollos? What is Paul? We are simply God’s agents in bring you the faith. Each of us performed the task which the Lord allotted to him: I planted the seed, and Apollos watered it; but God made it grow. Thus it is not the gardeners with their planting and watering who count, but God, who makes it grow. Whether they plant or water, they work as team, though each will get his pay for his own labour. We are God’s fellow-workers, and you are God’s garden” [1 Corinthians 3, verses 3 to 9, in the New English Bible translation]
So let me finish this series of reflections for the new year with the following question: where might God be calling us to work in partnership with someone else, to bring about a new beginning? Paul and Apollos formed a team – they were “God’s fellow-workers”. As we look around us, where might we find a fellow-worker?
And of course in teams, not every member will have the same role or the same gifts. It might be that in the year ahead, it will not be our role to plant a seed ourselves. Instead, it might be our role to water a seed planted by someone else. But as Paul would say, it doesn’t really matter who does the planting and who does the watering. The key thing is that both are done.
Perhaps our role in 2025 will be enable someone’s else dream to flourish.
A new series starts on Monday.