Faith can be warm and even fervent. It’s not how much you have but whether it actually connects you to the Source of all comfort, the Ground of all being.

Faith can be cool and even frozen – dormant, non-existent (though to be sure everybody has faith in something or someone;  whether that is saving, healing, guiding, nourishing, connecting faith to the True and to the Real is another matter).

The “fool has said in his heart – ‘there is no God,’” wrote the Psalmist. Well, that certainly limits the certainty of one’s conviction and the possible connections with the One who is there, the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of Life, Who alone can recreate us as necessary and buy and bring us back to God’s own good intentions.

Many things - including lack of forgiveness, can cause the fire of faith to flicker, to be quite diminished, ultimately to die out. Whether that will be a permanent and lasting situation for any one, God knows. (Actually, I'm a bit of a Calvinist on this point and I know there are verses about, well . . . erm, but let’s not presume.)

Freeing others through forgiveness brings freedom to ourselves and lights the fire within once more. And so does - God helping us, a whole lot of other things we should do as we enter a New Year, with some resolve at least. Today might be the best day to stop - or to start, certain almost too predictable about us behavioural habits. Hmmm.

All of this, of course, is about Christ-followers – who know themselves to be forgiven, though we only half-believe it, if that, most of the time. Our advance, if that’s what it is, in the Christian walk of discipleship, faith, service and love (for God, others and ourselves) is dependent upon our keeping warm.

We do that by coming close to others who are warm in faith themselves, in staying away from the sins of error and commission that drain our batteries and clog our spiritual pathways. We do that by listening when God’s calling, which sometimes means stopping to listen – trying to pay attention: to hear (if only that means ‘be still . . .  and know . . . that I am God.’) - and then to obey.