HEARING the Beatles’ song “I want to hold your hand” recently I thought about all the hands I’ve held in my lifetime, starting with my parents when I was very young and finishing, three generations later, with my grandsons.

I was in my late teens when the Beatles released that song and I remember it with affection because back then I was mixing with others who were also looking for someone whose hand they wanted to hold and share the rest of their lives with.

Now, as an orphaned widow with adult grandchildren, I rarely hold anyone’s hand but smile when I see others doing it because I see it as an expression of love.

One holding of hands that I will never grow out of comes from these words that I’ve known since childhood because they were on a little plaque in our home: 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.”

When George VI used them in his Christmas 1939 broadcast they struck a chord with a country facing the uncertainly of war. They were the preamble to a poem, God Knows, written in 1908, but nobody was able to identify the poet until midnight on Boxing Day when the BBC announced that the author was Minnie Louise Haskins, a retired London School of Economics academic.

The poem was just a small part of her career which had encompassed working in India and the East End, industrial welfare as well as academia, so she had obviously proved the truth of her words.

I too have proved their worth as they return to me unbidden each New Year.

As I face an unknown future, I can think of nothing better than to know that God, who has always loved me unconditionally, still wants to hold my hand.

Brenda Tregenza

Methodist local preacher