In December 1939, people across Europe looked towards the new year with a sense of foreboding. As Christmas approached everyone knew that ‘a state of war existed between Britain and Germany’. Bombs were not yet raining down on British cities, but the country was aware that the ‘phoney war’ would soon give way to all-out conflict. It was a mere twenty-one years since the end of the First World War and the trauma of conflict shaped the national consciousness. As King George VI went to record his Christmas broadcast to the nation that Advent, the Russians were mobilising in the east, and had already taken much of Poland, Finland and Norway; while Germany had overrun western Poland, Czecholslovakia, and Moravia – and France and the Low Countries were soon to fall.
That Christmas George VI famously quoted the poem “The Gate of the Year”, written by Minnie Louise Haskins in 1908, and it’s most well-known lines:
“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.'”
The question is, was Haskins right? And was the King right to quote those lines in the context that so much of the world from Glasgow to Paris, Algeria to Athens, Tokyo to Stalingrad, Rome to Nagasaki, Amsterdam to Auschwitz would soon be plunged into the horror of killing, in gas-chambers, aircraft, trenches, in tanks, in cities, in the countryside and on the high seas?
Some might think that these are nice lines to cite as we don’t have a light to see the future, and don’t have a ‘known way’ – the future is a mystery, and so to offer some sort of hope is at least to offer a crumb of comfort in the midst of catastrophe. “If the world descends into mayhem, then at least offer people ‘the hand of God’ to guide them through it” might seem a reasonable response. Holding on to some kind of optimism might be a better option than despair, or even panic.
Others might think these are profoundly mistaken sentiments, offering false hope, and ‘pie-in-the-sky’ platitudes to those who might have better invested their energies and hopes in the war effort. If God isn’t actually there, then Christmas 1939 would have been better spent digging for victory than sowing seeds of faith. But yet, we humans are rarely satisfied with the hopes that our finest schemes and aspirations present. We seem hard-wired to desire the kinds of hope that make little sense in a world made only of physical stuff, in which there is no soul, no heaven, no God, no right, wrong just (to coin the phrase) blind pitiless indifference.
Of course if God is there; then Haskins poetic wisdom isn’t either a distracting delusion or cheerful wishful thinking; but might actually be about the person who can help us navigate an uncertain future. This was certainly one of Jesus Christ’s many startling claims. When he told his disciples that God was preparing a place in heaven for them in the future, his disciple Thomas asked for directions for getting there (John 14: 1-6). Jesus declined to offer a roadmap for the future, but instead told him, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the Father except through me.‘ Often that verse is so taken up with the exclusivity of Christ’s claim that we miss the other aspect of it – which is the type of hope he offers us. He didn’t give them a chart of the end-times, he didn’t prophecy about the future direction of their lives; rather he said that ‘he’ was the way. He might as well have said with Minnie Lou Haskins “put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So what does this mean for us as we approach Christmas and the start of another year? We don’t know what 2026 will bring. We hope and we pray for peace; but we cannot be certain that the European war in Ukraine will not escalate, or that the Israel-Gaza conflict will not reignite into utter carnage.
It means this. That we can trust the unknown future to a known God, whose knowledge is complete. We cannot claim that trusting in God and following Christ will produce instant solutions to world problems today anymore than in did in 1939. But we can lean into the promise that if we are in a right relationship with God, that we can take his hand and that He will bring us through whatever joys or sorrows we face – in our personal or national experience. In that most well-loved Psalm (Ps23) David writes: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”. This is the promise of God’s presence and promises to us holding true, in the midst of a fallen world. He also writes, “and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” – the promise of eternal life when evils and traumas are no more.
However – just because such hope exists, it does not mean that we necessarily either own it, or experience it. (And to truly experience it we must first own it.)
To own this hope, each of us needs to be fully reconcilled to God. While by nature we are alienated from Him, and often feel far from Him; Jesus came to bring us back to God. When we put our faith in Jesus, and turn from our sin and begin to follow Him; God achieves reconcilliation with us. When that happens we have a strong basis for hope. Jesus’ audacious claim, ‘no one comes to the Father except through me’ means that if as you face the future, you want to do so with ‘your hand in the hand of God’ then according to Jesus, you can do so by entrusting yourself to Him. Anything less than that will do little more than appease the conscience before the next conflagration.
To experience this hope, each of us needs to consciously seek to put our hand in the hand of God. Too often we pay lip service to the ‘hope of Christmas’ and of ‘light coming into the world’ but don’t lean into this so that we actually experience the hope that Christ offers. If the words of the carol-service haven’t faded away, before your mind and heart shifts its expectations to mince pies. Christmas movies and Boxing Day football fixtures; then the hope we find will be similarly transient and insubstantial. When Jesus also promised to baptise his people with the Holy Spirit, he intended us not to believe in reconcilliation with God as mere neat abstract theology; but to encounter Him in our lived experience.
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.'” is simply not an optimistic, ‘chin-up, hope for the best” message of ecapist goodwill. It is rather that when we are ‘in Christ’ we have access to the Father, and when the Holy Spirit fills us we experience what it means to take the next step into an unknown future with Him. “And surely I will be with you, even to the end of the age” Jesus says. (Acts1)
I do not know what 2026 will bring for me or my family. I do not know whether we will experience peace or war in our time. But this I do know: Christ died for me and reconciled me to God. Christ rose again and sent the Holy Spirit in whom I encounter God. This God promises not to abandon me but to bring me to eternal life. He offers me His hand as I step anxiously forward.
I do not know what 2026 will bring for you or those you love. I do not know whether you will know peace or war in your times, in this nation or in your home. But this I do know. Christ died for you and offers you reconcilliation with God. Christ rose again and sends the Holy Spirit in whom you might encounter God. This God, promises never to abandon those who turn to Him, and to bring you through to eternal life. Christ offers you the hand of God as you step anxiously forward.
Take His hand by faith this Christmas / New Year.
