January 2026 Blog
Journey of the Magi by James Tissot (1836-1902)
As I sit at my desk on this first day of 2026 can I take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy and Joy filled New Year; and hope and pray that we won’t leave the celebrations of Christmas behind in 2025 but bring them into 2026 with Christ at the centre.
I wonder what God might be wanting to say to us at the beginning of this new year, as a church at St. Mark’s, as Ambassadors for Christ to the local community, and personally as children of God? Of course it is difficult to know for sure, but one thing is certain, and that is if we are not being attentive to the voice of God it will be difficult to discern His voice, from that of our own, others around us, or even the enemy who loves to bombard us with the world’s cacophony of voices.
This picture of the Magi was printed in this week’s Church Times together with an article about The Epiphany entitled ‘Travelling by a new path’. An article reflecting on pilgrimage or another word could be ‘a spiritual journey’. I am sure many of us at the end of a year look back at the journeys we have made, and give thanks for the good times, wonder how we managed to navigate the more challenging times, and perhaps still carry unanswered questions into the New Year – and in all honesty, for most of us, we don’t know what we will face in 2026 as a family of God, or as children of God.
But the season of Epiphany does tell us that these Magi, wise men, astronomers, took a very long journey from perhaps today’s Iraq (my birthplace) to the Holy Land. And, having found the child in a village called Bethlehem, presented gifts, and bowed down and worshipped Him, they returned home by a different route, travelled back by a new path.
At the beginning of this new year having also met with Jesus at Christmas do we simply go home and continue our lives as before? Or does our encounter with Jesus mark a significant stage, a turning point? For some this year God may be calling us to take a physical pilgrimage, and there are many such walks available in the UK, as well as abroad, but for most of us it may be a spiritual pilgrimage. The article suggests that ‘whether we take a physical or spiritual journey to Bethlehem, our return to our homes, families and workplace cannot remain the same if we have been changed by our encounter with Jesus.
For those of us who have taken physical pilgrimages, whether here in the UK such as Walsingham, or walked the Compostela, or visited the Holy Land, places where God has been revealed and been experienced in particular ways – one doesn’t just retrace one’s steps or return home physically, but one is touched and changed by that experience. If you like, we travel home by a new path. And we can do this too by taking an inward spiritual journey as well. As I reflected on probably the greatest pilgrimage of all time – Jesus travelling from Heaven to earth – growing up at home in Nazareth, walking and travelling for 33 odd years amongst God’s people – and then returning to sit with His Father, I wondered what was a significant part of his journey? And prayer came to mind. I don’t think Jesus could have undertaken this journey unless it had been underpinned by prayer. It was in prayer that He heard His Father’s voice, and that enabled Him to do only what His Father told him to do – a journey to the Cross and death, but also to resurrection, and ascension returning to His Father in Heaven. This is an extraordinary journey and one we too are called to walk, travelling by a new path towards God, a narrow road as we journey deeper in prayer, drawing us closer to our Divine Father, through His Son Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
At 3 am on New Year’s Day, 1739, the Holy Spirit also came to an all-night prayer meeting in Fetter Lane London, and many lives were changed, and they returned home travelling by a new path. John Wesley wrote in his journal following that evening, ‘The power of God came mightily upon us insomuch many cried out for exceeding joy and many fell to the ground’. John Wesley’s life changed that night, and he rode many miles on his horse preaching the good news of Jesus Christ. His brother Charles, after that prayer meeting, began to write 6,000 hymns, and their friend George Whitefield sailed to America to set the nation on fire with the Word of God – known as America’s first Great Awakening.
We know that all awakenings, revivals, have started from a place of prayer, and I just wonder, as I ponder the last year and the year to come, whether the church in the West has lost its way because the path of prayer is being by-passed by another route, the path of busyness? I heard Pete Greig say today, that before he started 24/7 Prayer Room, he was talking and preaching more about Jesus, than he was spending time with him’. As a busy priest that shouted at me, because prayer is the first thing the enemy will try and distract us from, he really does not want us to travel on a new path of prayer this year, because when we do we can only but draw closer to our Heavenly Father, as Jesus did when on earth.
I write this blog to myself as much as to anyone else because I really do believe that whatever God may want to say to us, as a church, community, and personally, it has to come out of a place of prayer. I know we all live busy lives, but we learn from Jesus, and he knew prayer was the most important thing if his ministry was to be fruitful and his mission fulfilled. There are thousands of people in our parish of Lache-cum-Saltney who don’t know Jesus, and how are they to hear about him unless we pray for them, and from that place of prayer are propelled out of church and our homes to share the good news of Jesus with our neighbours, just as they were on New Year’s Day in 1739, just as the disciples were propelled out of the upper room where they had been praying on the Day of Pentecost, and just as millions of other Christians have over the past 2,000 years.
Will you join me this year of 2026 in making prayer the bedrock in all that we do at St. Mark’s, because if you do, I believe with the power of God, we could see many coming to meet Jesus, bowing down, surrendering their lives to him, and travelling home by a new path. Look up Ephesians 3: verses 20/21 and make that your prayer for this year.
Blessings
Hennie