This year perhaps.

Good morning. Today we are  facing the New Year with all its promise and possibilities.

A lot can happen in a year.

For centuries the Jews, scattered in different countries around the world, prayed: “Next year in Jerusalem”.

It seemed a distant dream to those millions dispersed for successive generations in foreign lands. Could it ever be that they would return to their homeland?

I recall in 1967, after the six day war, Moshe Dayan leading his troops to the site of the ancient temple to pray at the wailing wall. He said “It is no more “Next year in Jerusalem”. God has answered our prayer. We are here, never again to leave.”

The hope of Christians that has been cherished through the centuries is “ Perhaps this year the Lord Jesus will return?”

Keep the dream alive. He promised in John 14:

“ I WILL COME AGAIN and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there may ye be also.”

I quote from the King James version, for that is the Bible from which my mother read in 1943 when bombs were raining down around our home in York, England.

Forgive me, but I cannot remember a single sermon preached by Vicar Wilkins in the church around the corner, but I can recite those verses from John 14 by heart. Everyone was underscored by concussions of 500 pound bombs. What a great aid they were to my memory. By the way, the promise that Christ would come again is as good this morning as it was in the blitz of York in 1943.