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The last day of the year is a moment to look back, see where we’ve been and where we’ve got to.

2024 was billed as the year of elections. 60 different countries held elections and over half the world’s population cast a vote in the last 12 months. Although the picture is mixed, some themes emerged. Voters have broadly voted for change in the major democracies, including in the United States and the UK. In Botswana the incumbent political party had been there for 60 years and was voted out for the first time. It seems that when asked who they wanted to vote for, millions of people in democracies replied ‘the opposition’.

And in other places, long standing leaders have changed by other means, most recently Bashar al Assad in Syria.

We human beings have revealed ourselves to be frustrated with our leaders as we’ve emerged from the suffering of the global event of Covid 19. If journalism is the first draft of history, then the first decades of this 21st century will surely have been revealed to be fractious, divisive – from the 2008 banking crash through to the pandemic 12 years later. Economic instability and political volatility has characterised these first 2 decades - with violence not voting being the chosen route to change in Gaza, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Sudan, and many more places besides.

There is a rhythm of prayer in the Christian tradition that focusses on the eve of a thing. The night before the day is marked with the ancient practice of vigil: watching. And not in the passive way we might binge watch a favourite TV show. The keeping of a vigil is an active attentiveness, awakeness on the eve: watching for the light, for the day. Watching for whatever comes next. This is marked collectively in religious practice of course – the eve of Christmas, All Hallows Eve, the eve of every festival or saints day through the year.

And New Year’s Eve, if not marked with complete bacchanalian abandon, is such a moment: akin to the night before an important event in life. The night before a wedding or a birth, before an operation or a battle or a death.

In a world voting for change, unstable for many, disrupted and fractious as it is, I watch for the building of just and peaceful communities, for hope that can be grown in the seedbed of good change, and for the trust that must be earned by any who speak where many listen, or make decisions that have consequences for others. Keep watch, we say. Stay alert. Keep anchored in what is most important, especially in the violence and disruption of these days.

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