TTNY - ‘This time next year’

All photos of Unsplash

A few years ago in the church I attend, there would be a short, weekly interview with an individual about TTT: This Time Tomorrow. It was a great way of getting to know what a Monday morning would look like in somebody else’s life journey. 

 

Whilst reflecting on those life journeys, I thought about TTNW: This Time Next Week. Then, we could go further into next month, next year, the next 5 years, 10 years and then reality has got to kick in at some point, hasn’t it? So allow me to ask about TTNY: This Time Next Year. 

Some of you may remember a TV show, This Time Next Year, that was presented by Davina McCall. It aired between November 2016 and March 2019 over 3 series.  

For any who didn’t watch it, participants made a pledge to fulfil a personal life goal within a 12 month period. The show continued as if a whole year had passed in the space of a few minutes. It was cleverly done. We saw massive weight loss stories such as a mother and daughter who successfully lost 15 stone between them, new careers being followed and a deaf toddler fitted with a cochlear implant for the first time being able to hear and respond to sound. 

There were before and after interviews with a brief 12 month diary clip shown in between which was very emotional and often had viewers in tears. Davina McCall gave some good advice along the way including…

The January Blues!

I read the following comment in the ‘The Guardian’ newspaper quite a while ago - ‘The  dilemma, I’m 22 years old and going into my fourth year in medical school. I have been using study to escape loneliness, insecurity and anxiety that arose from the stress of the course and my failure to establish friends’.

Another person wrote in The Telegraph “‘Life looks good on the surface - so why are we all so lonely?  ‘But you can’t be lonely,’ a friend tells me crossly. ‘You’re out  every night.’ The backhanded compliment makes me laugh. But it also makes me sad. On paper my life sounds glamorous. Denying  you  feel  lonely  makes no  more  sense  than  denying you  feel  hunger’” These are the comments of a high profile journalist who looks as if she is living the high life but most certainly doesn’t feel as if she is.

A new  national  commission  investigating loneliness  in  the  UK,  launched  in  January 2020, shows  that  a  fifth  of  the  population privately  admits  they  are  ‘always  or  often lonely’.  But  two-thirds  of  those people would never  confess  to  having  a  problem  in public. Here is the problem - loneliness is the devastating unseen result of the pressures and emptiness of modern life when people live devoid of real purpose and meaning.

New Year Resolutions

It was in 1994 when Take That had a hit with ‘Everything changes but you’ which starts with… 

Girl, come on over here.

Let me hold you for a little while

And remember I'll always love you

Forever, everything changes but you. 

 

At the start of a new year, many resolutions or important decisions are made. For 2023, research from Go.Compare revealed that 48% of the UK’s population made New Year’s resolutions. Within the top 10 were decisions about weight loss, taking care of mental health and improving finances.  

More of us will be making important choices for 2026…allegedly. It is estimated that more than two thirds of UK adults plan to make a New Year’s Resolution for 2026. I am part of the 32% of people who maintain that we have no plans to set such resolutions.  

This year also

 

“This year also” Luke 13.8

The title of this message comes from a parable spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ, recorded in Luke 13.6-9. He had just warned His hearers about the need for them to turn away from their sins, and of the terrible consequence of refusing to do so: they would perish, Luke 13.1-5. 

In the parable, He told of a man who had planted a fig tree in his vineyard, and who for three years had come expecting it to bear fruit, but it had failed to do so. His mind was that his vinedresser should cut the unfruitful tree down there and then, but the employee replied that he should “let it alone this year also”. This would be the last opportunity: if, with this extra time, and the best of care, it bore fruit, that would be a happy outcome; if not, then it should certainly be cut down.