As I write, I have three new challenges on the horizon – taking up a new post in my working life, embarking on a two-year training programme in my church life and a third, which has sailed in and made landfall today, taking over as the Editor of this column.

Each one feels like a huge responsibility and a serious commitment.

Each one also, being new, requires what we often call a ‘leap of faith’.

It’s not possible to know with any clarity what these new roles will involve as they develop.

In my experience, life is so utterly unpredictable in the detail that there’s not much point trying to predict it.

At one time, that ‘not knowing’ might have filled me with dread. But as my faith has deepened it’s become rather a wonderful thing.

A ‘leap of faith’ is not the same as a ‘shot in the dark’, but rather about confidently putting my trust in a higher power, rather than in my own abilities.

These lines from poet Minnie Louise Haskins, first popularised by King George VI in 1939, capture it best for me:

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.”

God go with you – and me – this week.

Lois Sparling, St George’s Kendal, Beacon Team Mission Community