New Year Message 2009
January 1st, 2009
Glen Cartwright, General Secretary
Icelandair
Icelandair, being the helpful airline they are, informed us on reaching the desk that there was actually a flight going to Glasgow at 7:20am. Would we like to go on it as there were plenty of seats. The prospect of getting home, putting the washing machine on, popping to get the shopping and seeing our folks that evening to share about our exciting holiday in the United States, was too good an opportunity to resist, much as we’d have like to have visited Reykjavik and the Blue Lagoon. After a quick call by Adrienne to her sister to arrange for an earlier pick up from Glasgow Airport, and my sorting out tickets and boarding passes with the Icelandair representative, we boarded the 7:20am flight to Glasgow, arriving home in Newton Mearns, a mere 9 hours after enjoying dinner in the airport restaurant at Boston Logan International.
We never knew when arriving at Reykjavik Airport on our inward flight from Boston the opportunity that was going to present itself to us, to get an earlier, unexpected flight back home. So if you’re planning on flying to the United States, you may wish to consider Icelandair!
You know, as we’ve entered this brand New Year that is 2009, with as yet unwritten chapters and a blank canvass, we never know the opportunities that will perhaps present themselves to us. Opportunities that may come when we least expect them, just like our Icelandair flight on that cold Sunday morning. Opportunities to preach. Opportunities to teach. Opportunities to encourage. Opportunities to develop a new ministry? Opportunities to rise to a new challenge in ministry? Opportunities to explore, as Jim Graham once said, “new spiritual geography”. Opportunities which are worth seizing. Opportunities which are God-given. To quote the flying analogy, “we will never experience the exhilaration of flying at 36,000 feet over the Atlantic unless we take that first step and put our foot on the plane”!
My humble prayer is that for each of us, whether we’ve been preaching for years, or whether we’ve only recently started out in preaching, 2009 will be a year when we will not only have that spiritual discernment to see opportunities, but will have that spiritual desire to seize opportunities. Will we be an opportunity seeing as well as opportunity seizing Association in 2009. God-given opportunities that call us to step out in faith whereby we will experience God’s favour upon our lives and ministry.
As regards visiting Reykjavik and the famous Blue Lagoon …… well, it’s only 2½ hours away from Glasgow, so we’re thinking it might well be the ideal venue for a winter break!!!
Every blessing to you for the New Year!
Your servant in Christ,
