Dear Church Family,
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s Day, full of rich times with family and friends.  We are most grateful for your many cards and good wishes, and especially for the most generous Christmas gift, which was overwhelming.  We continued to be blessed by the warm relationships and opportunity to minister together.  
I always get a little wistful at this time of the year, as I think back over the past year, full of satisfying joys and some sadness and disappointments.  Life is an unpredictable journey, of course, challenging us to live into our hopes and quell our anxieties.  Even a deep faith in God does not always mean smooth sailing, but it provides resources which are incomparable..  New Year’s is a good time to renew our determination to trust in God’s promises and be shaped by the fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control)  regardless of what is swirling around   us.  
The perspective of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s new year’s poem “Ring out, Wild Bells” still offers encouragement.  
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be. 
This week we highlight Epiphany Sunday.  Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas, traditionally the day the wise men arrived, marking the revealing of Jesus to the Gentiles.  The sermon is “Rise, Shine, and Give God the Glory,” and the texts are Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12.  Communion will be celebrated. 
See you in church,
 Rich 
To livestream FVCC's service, or view an archived service, click here: https://thefvcc.cc/online-worship