Looking Back On 2021

If 2020 was a strange and difficult year, in many ways 2021 has been stranger and more difficult.

From the first three months spent in yet another lockdown to some heartbreaking situations with family and friends, it has been another year of uncertainty and change. My word for the year was “faithfulness,” and it was definitely a useful focus. In all of the upheaval and disruption it was comforting to reflect on God’s faithfulness, and it was also helpful to look for how he was calling me to be faithful, often in circumstances that were less than ideal.

2021 has been a year of fewer words – partly because of weariness and partly because of dealing with things that were not my stories to tell. One of the insights that stood out to me about faithfulness is that it is often quiet and unseen.

2021 has also been a year of gratitude for the little things. At the start of the year, I made a list of things I hoped to do this year. It was a list I would have laughed at in 2019 because it would have been describing normal life, but it has provided many moments of celebration this year as I got to tick items off the list.

• Seeing my family after four months apart
• Meeting my work colleagues face-to-face
• Real life work with young people
• In-person church
• Playing with my band again
• Going to the theatre

There is one stand-out highlight from 2021 which means that, despite the challenges, I will always look back on this year with an element of joy. Once again it is not my story to tell, but I did write a short piece which gives a flavour of it from my perspective. This was written for the Scottish Fellowship of Christian Writers’ magazine “Showcase,” which had a theme of “Gatherings”.

The Gathering

“It can’t be a gathering.”

As we began planning our church Easter outreach that was the one certainty. Too many times now we had made plans, only for restrictions to change. Whatever we did, it had to be outdoors and definitely not a gathering. It had to be something we knew could go ahead. Gradually a plan came together for a story trail in the park…

Good Friday arrived – cold and crisp, but bright – the ideal day for a walk in the park. And as families arrived to collect their sheets and begin the trail, there was joy in the air. Even though it couldn’t be a gathering, for the first time in three months, they were in the same place, doing something together.

Fortunately, by this point, two households could gather outdoors because a woman appeared with her two daughters. A woman at the end of her rope, ready to give up, who discovered the trail in passing but got talking to a church member along the way, and there in the park they prayed…

The following week as we gathered on Zoom, she joined us – unsure what she was getting into, but eager to explore…

As summer came, we gathered regularly – just the two of us, but “where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20 NIV)

And God was certainly there. I felt like a mere spectator with a front-row seat to his healing, faith-building, life-transforming work…

Until one Sunday morning in August, we gathered on the beach – a proper gathering this time. The first in-person gathering of our whole church family in seventeen months. A gathering to celebrate a new member.

As she shared her story and was baptised in the sea there was hardly a dry eye, and I can only imagine the joyful gathering in heaven.

Even in a pandemic, God’s work of gathering the lost and bringing them to himself can never be restricted.

I’d love to hear: how was 2021 for you? What were the stand-out moments?

Wishing you all the best for the New Year and a good start to 2022!

Linking with: Inspire Me Monday, Tell His Story, InstaEncouragements, Let’s Have Coffee, Recharge Wednesday, #HeartEncouragement Community Link-Up, Grace & Truth