Five Helps for
the New Year were given one year by Bishop Michael Ramsey to his clergy. They
do not seem to have been published. The Rev'd Dr Ross Fishburn reports
that while he was doing doctoral research Bishop Grant passed on a file to him
which contained a sheet with these notes:
1. Thank God.
Often and always. Thank him carefully and wonderingly for your continuing
privileges and for every experience of his goodness. Thankfulness is a soil in
which pride does not easily grow.
2. Take care
about confession of your sins. As time passes the habit of being critical about
people and things grows more than each of us realize. ...[He then gently
commends the practice of sacramental confession].
3. Be ready to
accept humiliations. They can hurt terribly but they can help to keep you
humble. [Whether trivial or big, accept them he says.] All these can be so many
chances to be a little nearer to our Lord. There is nothing to fear, if you are
near to the Lord and in his hands.
4. Do not worry
about status. There is only one status that Our Lord bids us be concerned with,
and that is our proximity to Him. "If a man serve me, let him follow me,
and where I am there also shall my servant be". (John 12:26) That is our
status; to be near our Lord wherever He may ask us to go with him.
5. Use your
sense of humour. Laugh at things, laugh at the absurdities of life, laugh at
yourself.
Through the year
people will thank God for you. And let the reason for their thankfulness be not
just that you were a person whom they liked or loved but because you made God
real to them.
