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Good Morning

It's a great honour to be here in my home City of Hull on the eve of the official start of 2017 as the City of Culture.

I know what the actress Maureen Lipman means when she says, as another native of this City: "I think we need a short course on Hull and why we feel such tortured affection for the place". I agree. People only understand it's attractions once they've been here.

I'm not sure that we make New Year's resolutions like we used to: but a New Year in every culture and religion is an opportunity to reflect on all that has happened in the year that is passing and look forward to the possibilities a new year can bring.

Of course, that's easier said than done for many people after the year that we have just had. The situation in Syria and the wider Middle East, the implications of the working out of the UK Brexit vote as well as many other international challenges provide us with plenty of food for thought at Midnight tonight.

In the Christian faith there is a clear directive to hold fast to what you believe to be true however difficult the situation might be. Many of St Paul’s letters tackle exactly that theme. Jesus predicts uncertainty in the world and yet urges us, as many of the Old Testament Psalms do which he would have read – not to give up but to strive for what is right and good.

With this in mind and Hull’s upcoming Year of Culture, over Christmas I've been inspired by William Hague's biography of one of Hull's most famous sons - the great 18th century anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce, whose house, now a museum, is just a few hundred metres from where we are this morning. My dad, who still lives here, used to take me there often on a Sunday afternoon.

Hague suggests that Wilberforce never believed, like many others did, that abolishing slavery was against the odds. Wilberforce called his goal the prize: which is something won by hard graft, discipline and, in Wilberforce's case, a clear resolution to make his faith change things for the better in a highly complex world order of revolution, war and slavery.

Focussing on the prize we strive for as one year ends and another begins – both for this great City of Hull and for each of us in our own lives – Wilberforce urges us not to be downbeat or to get exhausted by world events but to strive faithfully and courageously for the prize which we cherish in the year ahead.

A Very Happy New Year!

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