Congregation, On behalf of my wife, Margaret, and myself I want to thank all the members of the congregation for their greeting cards and other tokens of kindness received in the past weeks, and, in lieu of our usual New Year’s day “handshake” greeting (which, I must admit, I forgot), please receive (in sterile print) our warmest greeting and wishes of God’s richest blessing to you all for the Year 2010. We look in faith and hope to our Sovereign Lord God who holds the future in His fatherly hands as we gather again on this first Lord’s Day. If believers who lived B.C. – before Christ – could encourage each other and say, “hope in the Lord” (Psalm 130:7, 131:3, 146:5), …how much more do we – who live in the A.D. (none of the C.E.—Common Era, politically correct jargon for me; for Christians it’s still Anno Dominus, “Year of our Lord”). How much more HOPE we have who know that our crucified Mediator, Saviour and Lord is enthroned in heaven with all power over the heavens and the earth, and HE is in control of each year, it is another of our Lord’s years…and all the future is, until He comes again. We have more reason confidently to say to each other in the face of all the challenges that await us this year: “Our help and hope is in the Lord.” And when it comes to facing the skeptical question of those who are “without hope, and without God in the world” let us pray for grace, that we may “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.”(I Peter 3:15). On this Lord’s Day, when Christians used to say to each other “He is risen, indeed,” we could also add, “and He is coming.” May each new Lord’s Day equip us to live each day “heartily as to the Lord.” (Col.3:23).