Janus, the Roman god of gates, doors and new beginnings – after which the month of January gets its name – is often portrayed as having two faces, one looking backward and the other looking forward. Christians believe God is the God of the past, the present, and the future (Exod. 3:14a), as well as the God of new beginnings (Rev. 21:5b). Jesus, our Saviour and Lord, portrayed by John as being “the door” by which we enter into new life (Jn. 10:1-10), is also spoken of as being “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). It's helpful to meditate on the faithfulness of God's mercies through the seasons of life (Lam. 3:21, 22), and the ability of God to bring us into new beginnings through Christ (2 Cor. 5:17-18a) as we observe another transition from the Old to the New Year.

I remember the Christmas we celebrated a year after coming to Canada with my family from the Netherlands in 1951. We'd moved from a farm in Athens, just outside of Brockville, Ont., where we'd first been boarded with a couple of Dutch brothers who had sponsored us, to a big, old clapboard farmhouse which my folks had rented for our family in the village of Tincap. I'd just turned seven, and was attending Grade 1 in the one-room country schoolhouse with my sister that fall.

My first trip after assembly was to Winnipeg to celebrate the anniversary of a covenant our church and other Canadian churches made with aboriginal people-promising to walk together in new paths of healing and reconciliation-as well as to visit some of the congregations in the presbytery. I took and read Peter Bush's recent book, Western Challenge: The Presbyterian Church in Canada's Mission on the Prairies and North, 1885-1925. After all, Winnipeg was once the railhead and supply capital of the west, and the advance of the gospel from that city by Presbyterians, who were passionately committed to reaching those who had settled in the west and the north, was nothing short of phenomenal. These pioneering missionaries, under the supervision of the legendary James Robertson, were keen for the Lord and they were innovative. They established new churches; they touched the lives of aboriginal people and new settlement communities alike. Thus, in spite of numerous bureaucratic holdups, the gospel fell into fertile ground and produced abundantly rich harvests.

Rev. Dr. John Gladstone, one of Canada's late princes of preachers, offers wise insight in a sermon-based on Luke 17:15, 18:11 and 22:17 – entitled Graduating In Gratitude which states there are three levels of thanksgiving. The first, most rudimentary, is basic, obvious thanksgiving for the grace of gifts and mercies experienced; the second, more problematic, is the kind of thanks which compares our fortunate condition to the less fortunate condition of others and the last, most mature thanks, is thanksgiving in the face of the world's or one's personal agonies and suffering.