No one, of course, knows the future: – what is ahead for our own selves, for our familes, for our nation, and for our world, in the coming days and months of this New Year. Some things, perhaps, we’d like to know so we could plan well, plan accordingly. And there may be some glimpses and probabilities most likely to happen for which we need to be prepared. But mostly we don’t know – and it’s likely best that way.

God knows of course.

My Dad used to sing an old hymn sometimes as we worked together on the farm, an old gospel song now in the public domain, written years ago by Joseph Parker who lived from 1830 till 1902.

God holds the key to all unknown, and I am gladIf someone else were to hold the keyOr if he trusted it to me –I would be sad.

What if tomorrow’s cares were here, without its rest?I’d rather He unlocked the dayAnd as the hours swing open, say'My will is best.'

The very dimness of my sightMakes me secure;For, groping in my misty way,I feel His hand; I hear Him say –My help is sure.

I cannot read His future plans;But this I know;I have the smiling of His face,And all the refuge of His grace.

Enough; this covers all my wants;And so I rest;For what I cannot, He can see,And in His care I saved shall be,Forever blest.

These are similar thoughts to what some will remember as part of King George the VI’s Christmas Address in 1939, in those dark months just before Europe and Britain were plunged into the agony of the Second World War. His daughter Elizabeth, our present Queen, had come across the words and she gave them to her father as he prepared to speak to the nation and the British Empire. The poem, written by Minnie Louise Haskins and published in 1908, was entitled “God Knows” but the words are such that people remember it from the King’s address, as ‘The Gate of the Year.’ When he died, Queen Elizabeth had the words inscribed on stone plaques at the gates of the George VI Memorial Chapel, the place of the King’s interment at Windsor Castle.

The poem is longer and you can look it up – but here are the words that are most remembered and that I find helpful to read year by year as the old year calendar is removed and coming to replace it are the new, mostly blank days and months ahead. I hope these words will be of help and inspiration to you, as they are to me, as I begin this New Year . . .

God Knows . . .

And 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.

May God bless and keep you and yours throughout the coming year.