Prayer for the Day
Foreword by Bishop James Jones
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Biographical Index of Contributors
Acknowledgments
There’s a spiritual instinct in us all, and very few people do not at some stage in their lives find themselves praying, in one form or another. Often, it’s a crisis that brings us to our knees. But sometimes it’s the sheer joy of being alive that makes us want to find someone to thank for our good fortune.
I love Prayer for the Day. You never quite know where the day’s chosen prayer will take you. There’s a serendipity about it, and I’m often surprised by the prayer’s relevance not just to the day’s events but also to my own personal life.
The programme suits early-risers like myself. I catch it as I surface from slumber and lie there, half-asleep and half-awake, while my soul catches up with my body. But this book is also for those whose body clock works differently! If you’re not up in time for the radio broadcasts, these pages show you what you’re missing.
All religions teach us about praying. Whatever else they tell us about the mysteries of life, they all agree that to be human is to pray. The prayers and reflections in this collection are geared to equip us to face whatever life throws at us each day. They give us words to respond to the vagaries of being alive. They connect us to our common world, at the same time lifting us above it to become a little less attached and slightly more objective about our circumstances. And, in doing so, we begin to discern some values and principles of universal application.
I often pray aloud when I’m out walking. With the proliferation of mobile phones and earpieces, the whole world now looks as if it’s talking to itself, so I don’t feel quite so self-conscious! But people have been praying aloud for generations. In fact, it was when the disciples of Jesus heard him praying out aloud that they asked him to teach them how to do it. He famously told them to start their prayers by calling on God as Father. Now, that’s not an easy concept if you’ve had a bad experience of fatherhood. But what Jesus was driving at was that, at the heart of creation, there is not just a force but a being capable of love.
When you think about the greatest gifts we have as creatures, it is to love and to be loved. Presumably the one that made us can do what we can do, so it’s not such a giant leap to believe that the Creator can also love and be loved.
This is what gives our praying such beauty: the thought that the one with whom we are communing might not only hear us but love us and want the best for us.
That’s not always easy to believe, especially in a world that can appear so random and destructive. I heard one writer say that faith is like holding on to a length of string that disappears up into the clouds and every now and again tugs a little.
You might just find that the prayers in these pages get the string tugging a little. If they do, they’ll have done their job.
The Right Reverend James Jones was Bishop of Liverpool from 1998 to 2013, and Bishop of Hull from 1994 to 1998. He chaired the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and he speaks, writes and broadcasts on a range of issues, including the environment, ethics in business, regeneration and faith and its impact on the future.
The slate is clean and all’s to play for. ’Ere we go, ’ere we go, ’ere we go. A new year stretches out ahead of us and we have no way of knowing quite what it’s going to contain. It’s a time for making resolutions, promising ourselves and our loved ones that we’ll make every effort in this new year of grace to pull our socks up and to get our act together. A lovely idea, though we all know how short-lived these declarations of intent can be.
Methodists begin the New Year with what we call a covenant service. We set out our good intentions in a context where we remember the God who has always kept the promises he’s made to us. Our New Year resolutions don’t depend on our being strong enough to keep them, but are seen as a response to the unfailing and unfathomable love of our maker. So we make our commitments knowing that God will help us to keep them. ‘I am no longer my own,’ we’ll say, ‘but Yours. Your will, not mine, be done in all things, wherever You may place me, in all that I do and in all that I may endure; when there’s work for me and when there’s none; when I’m troubled and when I’m at peace. Your will be done when I’m valued and when I’m disregarded; when I find fulfilment and when it’s lacking; when I have all things, and when I have nothing. I willingly offer all I have and am to serve You as and where you choose.’
Dear Lord, on this New Year’s Day, we ask You to help us keep our promises and to hold fast to us in love, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
This is the week that Christians celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, the visit of the Wise Men to present their gifts to the Christ-child. They are travellers who come from a place that we don’t know – somewhere in ‘the East’ – to a place that they don’t know – first to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem, one the birth place and the other the royal seat of David, Israel’s most celebrated king. But the Wise Men were in search of the future, not the past, seeking the one the carol calls ‘Great David’s greater son’.
For many pilgrims today, a place is made holy by its rootedness in the past. They kneel in reverence in a building like my own parish church, where God has been worshipped for centuries. It is, as TS Eliot says, a place ‘where prayer has been valid’.
Or it can be the landscape itself that offers that experience – Bardsey Island, off the west coast of Wales, is said to be the burial place of 20,000 saints. It’s what the Celtic Christians called a ‘thin place’, where the divine and natural worlds are so close together that we can catch a glimpse of God beyond the veil that elsewhere hides him from our sight.
The Celts used to say that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the ‘thin’ places, the distance is much smaller. For the Wise Men in the Gospel story, heaven came so near that they could reach out and touch it. For Christians, God had come to earth in the form of a tiny babe.
Holy God, Your love enfolds us; You are before us and behind; You are the light that shines in our darkness. Hear our prayer that those who seek You may find You, and those who find You may rejoice in that knowledge always; in the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Amen.
It was pitch black. I could make out the beach – just – and could certainly hear the thundering surf beyond it. We were told we just had to watch and wait. And that’s what we did. Being stranded on Ascension Island in June for four days was not part of the plan, but it did mean I got to know this volcanic outcrop, near the equator, miles from everywhere. We watched and waited. Then things began to happen. A shape appeared from the surf and began to struggle up the beach. The noise from above confirmed the arrival, as flocks of skua birds circled in anticipation of a meal.
The arrival was a mother turtle scraping her way up the beach and away from the Atlantic surf to lay her young. The sand was scooped away, the eggs laid, and then the exhausted mother tried to cover them and her tracks as the skuas flew closer and closer. This reptile did what mothers all over the world do: worked tirelessly to protect her young, regardless of the cost to herself.
There will be many mothers in all parts of the world today, waking up as we do, but fearful for their young and what this day will bring. In the days after the birth of her first child, Mary must have woken up fearful too – far from her home in Nazareth, confused by visits of shepherds and stories of angels in the pitch-black sky above Bethlehem.
All young mothers deserve a prayer this day.
Lord God, bless all mothers as they care for their newborn. Watch over them and protect them; and help us to see in every child the face of Your Son. Amen.
According to the Gospel story, the Wise Men who came searching for Jesus had two guides: the star they’d followed from the East, and the holy books which the Jewish scribes consulted at the court of King Herod. The Messiah, they said, was to be born not in Jerusalem but in Bethlehem, for so it had been written by the Prophet.
For many people, such predictions are as strange and unnerving as the origins of the Wise Men themselves. And yet Christians claim their scriptures to be divinely inspired. ‘Listen to the word of the Lord,’ we often say in church at the end of a Bible reading. Perhaps we’d be clearer if we said ‘listen for the word of the Lord’, seeking to discern God’s will in and through those ancient texts. For there’s an ongoing conversation between the words on the page and those in the hearts and minds of those who listen to them.
There are so many ways of interpreting scripture, and Christians have not always agreed with one another about what principles to follow. And yet, we are agreed that the Bible is more than just of historical interest. In it we can discover how God wants his people to live their lives.
Christians are continually revisiting the scriptures, discovering how to hear God speaking to them in their own situation. So the stories of God’s rescue of his people from slavery in Egypt, or from their exile in Babylon, have come to speak powerfully to those on the margins. These ancient texts have become ‘founding documents’ for those excluded by the prejudice of others against their race, class or gender. They have become words of power, as the scriptures continue to comfort and challenge all who ‘listen for the word of the Lord’.
Lord God, You reveal Yourself anew to every generation; help us to trust in Your promises, that in the written word and through the spoken word we may come to see the Living Word, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today – or at least this evening – is Twelfth Night, the twelfth day of Christmas and the end of the season’s festivities. Some people may already have taken the Christmas decorations down and settled back into their normal routines. But, traditionally, today was marked with one last bout of feasting and mischief-making, with all social roles and behavioural norms temporarily suspended before the cold realities of the New Year finally kicks in. Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night was written for this feast, with its cocktail of love, laughter and practical jokes, mixed with a dash of cruelty and insanity.
The 21st-century descendant of this unbridled madness is probably the office Christmas party. And there will be more than a few people who will be looking back ruefully to the pre-Christmas revelries as they head back to work after a long Christmas break.
The upside-downness of Twelfth Night has theological roots. It’s a declaration that at the first Christmas God was born a baby, kings knelt down in a stable and so all heaven and earth was turned on its head. It’s madness of course – scandal even – and fully deserves all the opprobrium of rationalists. But if it’s true, then it’s divine madness that will send us into the day laughing in the knowledge that wise men can be fools, the poor can be rich, and God who sometimes seems so distant is actually as close as a breath away.
God incarnate, we thank You again for this season of Christmas. Today, as I pull my suit out of the cupboard and head back to the office, help me to carry in my heart some transforming sense of the joyful, revolutionary madness of Your incarnation, for Jesus’s sake. Amen.
Many of you will have heard the song ‘Bless this House’, written by Helen Taylor and May Brahe. Published in 1927, it’s been recorded by a number of artists including Perry Como and Dame Vera Lynn. The opening lines are: ‘Bless this house, O Lord, we pray, make it safe by night and day.’
Our homes are where we’re supposed to feel safe and secure. Sadly, there are many people of all ages for whom ‘home’ is a dangerous and unhappy place. The very British notion of our house being our ‘castle’ – a firmly segregated stronghold – has its good and bad sides. It’s good for us to have a measure of privacy, shutting out the world after a long and difficult day; but on the other hand, we’re reluctant to be seen as interfering, so we don’t get involved with our neighbours or colleagues and maybe miss the signs that all’s not well.
In Western Christianity, today is the feast of the Epiphany. It’s the day when the Wise Men are traditionally supposed to have arrived at the house of Mary and Joseph after their long search for the child Jesus. They brought their gifts and knelt before the Infant King, recognizing in him the Light of the World.
There are some ancient customs associated with this festival, but perhaps one of the best is the tradition of ‘blessing the house’ on Epiphany night. Members of the household gather, light a candle and walk around the house saying prayers, asking for love and light, peace and comfort to reign in their home.
Lord, may those gifts be granted to our homes today, as the Light of the World shines in – and even more so to those who are struggling behind closed doors. Amen.
Today, many Christians throughout the Middle East who still follow the ancient Julian calendar will be celebrating the birth of Christ, who chose to be born of a simple family in a humble manger. He was not born in a palace, or surrounded by servants of the angelic host, but shared the life that many Christians still live this very day.
For their part, the many thousands who will spend today in refugee camps or in war-torn villages and cities will remember with particular significance that the Infant Christ literally did not have a place to lay His head.
Whether it be our sisters and brothers in Syria, the Palestinian territories, Libya, Egypt or elsewhere in the Middle East, they will have to contend with matters that for us will occupy a three-minute slot on today’s news, but for them is the reality of their lives.
During a season when the more privileged are focusing on gifts and feasts, it will be good to remember those for whom the most significant gift today, besides the birth of the Incarnate Word, is the hope that they may be able to wake up healthy and still surrounded by their families and whatever remains of their communities.
We remember all those in the many communities of the Middle East whose lives have been torn apart by war and violence, praying peace and comfort upon them all, and that the spirit of joy will enter into their hearts, homes and communities. Amen.
This coming weekend the Christian Church celebrates the festival of the Baptism of Christ. Jesus was baptized as an adult by his cousin John, and as he came up out of the water he was named by God, speaking from heaven: ‘This is my beloved Son.’
The giving of a name (usually at birth), and all the rituals that go with it, is a universal human experience. A name marks us out as an individual (even if millions share the same one!), and gives us our place in a family and in society.
The now receding practice of giving a prisoner a number and using only that instead of a name is deeply symbolic of the separation and broken relationship with the community as a result of crime – think of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables: ‘prisoner 24601’.
In the course of my ministry as a prison chaplain I’ve met a number of prisoners who not only have a number but have also had to change their name. Sometimes this is because of their notoriety and the crimes they’ve committed, and sometimes it’s because they’ve given information to the authorities and need to be protected. I remember regularly visiting one man over the course of several months and gradually learning his story. The reasons for his name change were totally understandable, but there was no doubt it had a profound effect on him, cutting him off from his sense of his place in the world and who he was. It was enormously moving when, shortly before his release, he told me his real name.
So, Heavenly Father, help us remember that You’ve called each of us by name, knowing us inside out, so precious are we to You. With that knowledge lodged in our hearts, may we treat each other with dignity and care. Amen.
Right now, parents and carers around the country are trying to grab a few more precious moments of sleep before they’re dragged kicking and screaming into consciousness by a child desperate to go out into the cold and do some kicking and screaming of their own. While most of us are still in our pyjamas, there is a dedicated minority who have an icy start to the day, struggling to keep warm on a touchline.
I’ve seen some of the benefits of early-morning football training with my birth children, but it was with one particular foster son that I really witnessed the transforming power of sport. He’d had a difficult start to life and struggled with almost everything – concentrating, coordinating, anxiety attacks, poor eyesight, socializing and behaviour. I took him to burn off some energy, and as the coaches invested time and attention in him, he grew in confidence and self-esteem – precious things for a young footballer likely to spend his entire childhood in the care system.
Unlike Bill Shankly, I’m not convinced that football is more serious than life or death, but I do believe sport can be a force for good in the world. For my foster son, sport was the stage for kind words to be spoken. Sport was the social context to receive a rare pat of affirmation, a cheer of celebration or an embrace of commiseration.
But praise needn’t be confined to a cold field on a Saturday morning. Let’s kickstart a new habit in life-building affirmation and practice today, commending those we rub shoulders with.
Lord God, father to the fatherless, protector of widows and orphans, awaken us today to the opportunities to offer kindness and hope in the lives of those around us. Amen.
‘On and after the 10th of January a letter, not exceeding half an ounce in weight, may be sent from any part of the United Kingdom to any other part, for one penny if paid when posted, or for two pence if paid when delivered.’ These regulations of 1840 mark the birth of the universal postal service that we take for granted.
Sadly, in 2015, handwritten letters are becoming a thing of the past. We now live in a world of emails and social media; more often than not, post means packages and packets that we have ordered over the internet.
I penned a thank-you letter in my spidery script to a friend who had helped me with some work last year: I wanted him to know I’d not simply asked someone to input it for me. He sent me a reply message on social media. He said he was delighted to receive a handwritten letter, he didn’t think anyone did that anymore!
Perhaps we should. My emails are regularly archived, but there’s something permanent and tangible in having the physical copy in original handwriting. I still treasure my late father’s last letter to me sent in 1989 when a 1st-class stamp was 19 pence.
Much of the New Testament consist of letters. Love letters, thank-you letters, letters recording events and letters of warning. Copied and recopied still, evidence of the art with which they were written remains.
At the end of one letter, St Paul writes: ‘see what large letters I write with my own hand’. He has taken the pen from the scribe and makes his mark to make his point: this is from me and it matters.
Heavenly Father, in our world of changing and ever faster communications, help us to know and by every means share the permanence of Your love. Amen.
January can be a difficult month; one when we find ourselves confronting spells of outer and inner darkness.
With tougher screening at airports and unemployment expected to peak at 2.8 million, many will have to face radical changes to their lives this year. Some may already be coping with other forms of loss – finding themselves bereft after losing a partner, family members or friends, or facing serious illness or perhaps sight problems that will severely curtail their lifestyles during the year, while some older members of society will have to give up their homes to receive full-time nursing care.
It’s natural and proper to feel compassion for those on the losing end, and yet, in the spiritual life, less is always more. It’s a paradox I first learned as a young newspaper reporter when my copy was subbed back to make it have more impact; and it’s one I’m more conscious of as I grow older. The 13thcentury German mystic Meister Eckhart once said that God isn’t found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. Perhaps this is why we sometimes feel closer to God through silence or simple monastic chant than in wordy church services.
The late film director Anthony Minghella once told me that he was drawn to Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight because it was simultaneously a place of austerity and of beauty. There was little decoration but great attention had been paid to the brick, which provided warmth and welcome. There, too, less was more.
Let us pray for all those facing diminishment of one kind or another at the start of this year. As they embrace their personal difficulties and disappointments, may they discover inner resources and riches from which to uphold their dignity and live each day in trust and hope. Amen.
One of my most hotly anticipated Christmas presents was the DVD box set of a television series that I enjoyed in the mid-’80s. It hasn’t disappointed.
I’ve been relieved to discover that, despite the irrefutable arrival of middle age, my memory is still in reasonable working order. Characters and plots, even specific lines, are as I remember them. And I’ve been relieved to discover that my sense of humour hasn’t morphed beyond recognition. The jokes still make me laugh out loud.
And yet, watching a series I last saw 25 years ago, I’ve noticed changes too. It’s not just that the cars, clothes and hairstyles are often hilariously different. It’s not just that the actors all look much younger. It’s that the stories provoke reactions in me that I don’t think they did then. An account of a failed relationship; a depiction of a dysfunctional team; the development of an unlikely friendship: all these have an impact on a viewer who has experienced them that is different from their impact on a viewer who has not.
My Christmas present has given me a glimpse of who I am and of who I am not. Twenty-five years have passed like the blinking of an eye. I am who I was then. And yet I am different – a tiny bit wiser, perhaps; a little more forgiving, I hope; and possessing just a few more shreds of compassion.
God, You are our beginning and our end and in You we live and move and have our being. Affirm in us those things that are good, perfect in us those things that need perfecting and help us become the people You long for us to be. Amen.
Today is the birthday of Michael Bond, the celebrated children’s author and creator of Paddington Bear.
I was one of those children who adored his Paddington books when growing up, which explains why I loved the Paddington Bear trail in London last year: 50 Paddington statues in prominent positions close to museums and key landmarks. Each bear was created by an artist, a designer or a celebrity. I was sorry when it finished at the end of December.
As people queued to take their selfies, the idea that a Peruvian immigrant bear got a warm, friendly welcome seemed quite believable.
The reality for some migrants here in parts of Northern Ireland is quite different. No welcome. Told to leave. Their property attacked.
The Bible tells us that Mary and Joseph fled with Jesus into Egypt after Epiphany. It is silent on what happened there, but apocryphal legends captured in Italian paintings tell us how, on the way, dragons bowed, lions and leopards adored, palm trees bent down to give them dates and the journey was miraculously shortened. Stories and legends have a neat way of idealizing and sanitizing the reality of what it is like to be an outsider.
In the Old Testament book of Leviticus it says, ‘When a stranger lives with you in your land, don’t take advantage of him. Treat the foreigner the same as a native. Love him like one of your own. Remember that you were once foreigners in Egypt.’
Lord God, we were separated from You and You came and sought us. We were outsiders but You prepared a place for us and made us welcome. Help us to reflect Your welcome in our lives. Amen.
As a teacher I seem to be on a treadmill of report writing. Glowing reports cluttered with compliments are the easy ones to polish off. It’s finding the words to give a tactful kick up the backside that takes the time. Yet help is at hand in the published reports of the great and the good of the past. Philosopher AJ Ayer’s form master from Eton wrote on his report: ‘A bumptious, aggressive, difficult boy too pleased with his own cleverness.’ Paddy Ashdown’s games teacher remarked that he was ‘a good fellow, if a bit excessively Irish at times.’
One report written in the school I presently teach at – The Manchester Grammar School – dates back to 1946. ‘Though he seems to view his schoolmasters with amused and Olympian contempt,’ wrote the boy’s form master, ‘the present illusion of superior mind is usually shattered by a display of abominable ignorance. He is a lazy observer and lazy in acquiring the solid factual foundations of knowledge.’ The pupil was a certain John Polanyi. He went on to be a Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
When I began as a teacher, they had a phrase: ‘Catch them being good.’ It meant, don’t write any student off. Don’t blame and anticipate failure. Expect and encourage achievement. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And you never know, it might be their surgical scalpel I fall under, or their political whims that govern the country in my retirement.
So it’s important to praise loudly - and blame softly.
Gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love, thank You that You treat us with compassion and not as our sins deserve. Help us this day to be eager to encourage and slow to point the finger of blame. Amen.
It was the title that grabbed my attention: ‘Joy Unspeakable in an Unspeakably Joyless World’ – an article by a black American female theologian in a journal that arrived in my first post of the New Year. ‘An unspeakably joyless world!’ – well, that fits, I thought, as the news brought the same sad stories: Iraq; Somalia; global warming; trolley-waits in local hospitals. ‘Joyless’ indeed. But it was the original source of the quotation that really surprised me: George Bernard Shaw, just over a hundred years ago! But he was reflecting positively on where ‘joy’ is to be found in such a world as his – and ours! So where is unspeakable joy to be found in an unspeakably joyless world?
This is the true joy of life, Shaw wrote, ‘of being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and so long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can.’
Jesus invited people to follow him as individuals and so find ‘life in all its fullness’. But he brought them into a community of shared faith and common aims: the Church. True joy in this world is to be found, not in selfish isolation, but in the giving of that self to others and to God.
Lord God, lead me today beyond the suffocating boundaries of my own self-interest, that I may find joy in others. Amen.
On 16 January 1920, the United States introduced the nationwide constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation and transportation of alcoholic beverages. We know it better as ‘Prohibition’.
The unintended consequences were enormous: the rise of the Mafia and organized crime; widespread corruption in the police forces in every large city in the US; the courts overwhelmed.
Winston Churchill visited the US during Prohibition. He’s reputed to have said that Prohibition ‘is an affront to the whole history of mankind’. While in New York, he was involved in a car accident and subsequently secured a prescription which reads, ‘This is to certify that the post-accident convalescence of the Hon. Winston S Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times.’
Widespread use of medical permissions made a mockery of Prohibition.
We do, I think, need to take care how we use our freedoms and how we curtail the freedoms of others. I know I find the idea of grace more compelling than compulsion of law. I understand that we need both.
St Paul says, ‘It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows.’
Heavenly Father, we take our freedoms for granted. We do not pause often to consider the unintended consequences of our words or deeds. Teach us how to use the freedom You have given wisely and graciously. Amen.
Eight hundred years ago this week, King John was holed up in the Temple Church off Fleet Street in London. He was under intense pressure from the barons of England to recommit himself to the values of the Coronation Charter, which essentially placed limits on the King’s powers and providing some basic rights for individuals, especially the barons themselves.
The idea that the King was anything other than supreme was distinctly unattractive to John. And he might well have taken comfort in this from his reading of the Bible. On a superficial reading it seems to place great weight on the authority of kings and on the subjection of commoners. In the Old Testament, many kings were directly appointed by God and anointed by his prophets, and even the bad kings seemed to rule with God’s blessing.
But there’s another side to the story – a side that the barons pressed but John was less willing to hear. The Old Testament prophets consistently railed against those kings who used their power for self-aggrandisement or to oppress the poor. Above all, it was to be recognized that God was King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
The Bible’s understanding of kingship has resonance for any one of us who exercises leadership; whether we’re a king or queen in our own workplace, community, business or family.
King of Kings and Lord of Lords, where we have power over the lives of others by virtue of our wealth or talents or position, give us grace to exercise that power with care and compassion, knowing that all authority comes from You. Amen.
A story is told of a bitter feud between two noble families of medieval Ireland, the Butlers of Ormond and the FitzGeralds of Kildare.
Fleeing from Earl FitzGerald’s soldiers, the nephew of the Earl of Ormond took sanctuary in the chapter house of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Surrounding him, FitzGerald had the upper hand, yet he wished to end the bloody feud peaceably. He pleaded with his enemy through the chapter house’s oak door, but since the nephew suspected treachery, all negotiations were rejected. FitzGerald then ordered his soldiers to cut a hole in the centre of the door, thrusting his arm through it to shake hands. With heavily armed men inside, it was a risky venture. The nephew however, shook his hand in friendship and ended the dispute.
This ‘Door of Reconciliation’ is on display in the Cathedral to this day. Beside it are the words of Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians: ‘God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ. And He has committed us to the message of reconciliation.’ In any conflict we can lock ourselves up behind walls of past hurts or resentment or have the courage to chance our arm in peacemaking. Jesus taught his own disciples to take up their cross daily and follow him. He knew to his cost the realities of speaking peace to a violent world. It may be in the politics of the workplace, the rage of the road, domestic disputes or long-standing grudges, but the work of reconciliation is all around us.
Prince of peace, may we find in You the strength to avoid fuelling conflicts and to forgive. Amen.
Some years ago now, when I was a producer in religious broadcasting, I took three leading churchmen to the Holy Land. John was a Roman Catholic priest, Richard an Episcopalian bishop and Gilleasbuig a Church of Scotland minister. We were all friends, and we arrived in Jerusalem on a Saturday afternoon. I was anxious to get on with recording but I was aware my colleagues might want to go to worship the next day. So as dinner ended, I asked them anxiously if they wanted to go to church the next morning. Gilleasbuig asked if John, the Roman Catholic priest, would give us communion in his room the next morning. Priests aren’t officially allowed to give Communion to those who aren’t Catholics, but immediately he agreed, gathered up the remains of a bread roll, took what was left in his glass of wine and we all went off to bed.
At eight o’clock the next morning we all perched on the edge of Father John’s bed, beside the crumpled bedclothes. He read a passage from the Bible, talked a wee bit about it and then led us through the mass, the Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, call it what you will, and we shared the stale bread roll and the dregs of wine.
It was the most real act of worship I have ever attended. And what made it real was that, although it was intensely moving, none of us said so. We simply went down to breakfast and went out to start recording. Christian faith for me isn’t about spiritual ‘highs’: it’s what quietly sustains me as I get on with what I have to do.
I think of that moment at this time of year, for this is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I’ve seen it and it works.
Loving God, show us how to bring all together in the one Kingdom of Yours, where no sword is known but the sword of truth and no strength known but the strength of love. Amen.
Slavery is a curse on humanity that has not entirely gone away. Human trafficking, enforced prostitution and mental imprisonment still happen today, even here in Britain.
Solomon Northup was a free man who lived quietly in upstate New York until he was lured away and sold into slavery. His story is told in the film 12 Years a Slave, a visceral and heart-rending account of the extent to which slavery harmed all who were caught up in it. Not only were slaves brutally treated, slave owners descended to a shocking level of depravity in order to maintain the system.
On this day in 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States. At his inauguration he spoke about how his own father would have been barred from many public places even a generation ago. The idea of an African American rising to the heights of Presidency was almost unthinkable until recently.
So much has been achieved but much still needs to be done. Our own freedom actually depends on the liberation of others. That is what Northup’s story tells us.
When Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, he reserved a special place at the inauguration for his jailers. His liberation was also theirs.
The legacy of slavery and oppression lingers on, haunting us with a cruel past that disfigured all those involved. Working to overcome slavery and oppression will make better people of all of us.
Lord Jesus Christ, you were cruelly beaten as a prisoner and executed as an innocent man; and yet you spoke words of forgiveness from the cross. Teach us the grace that enlarges our humanity and remakes the world. Amen.
Today is the anniversary of the death of George Orwell, the famed author of Animal Farm. This is an allegorical text in which the animals adopt seven commandments to distinguish themselves from humans. These include ‘All animals are equal’ and ‘No animal shall kill any other animal.’ Later, however, their leaders change them, manipulating language and situation to suit their own selfish ends. So some animals would become ‘more equal than others’, and they are not to be killed ‘without cause’!
I like what Orwell does in this book. He’s playfully and insightfully recalling the Seven Laws of Noah – a set of moral imperatives for all humankind. There is the establishment of a court of law and prohibitions against idolatry, murder, theft, immorality, blasphemy and eating live animals. These precepts are embedded not only in the Ten Commandments, but also in the 613 commandments, or mitzvot in Hebrew, that Jewish people are expected to perform – some daily, others on special occasions in their lives.
Many mitzvot entail the performance of good deeds – charity, for example, or the visiting of the sick. We don’t expect material recompense for these actions; but one mitzvah brings another in its train. Indeed, the Ethics of the Fathers (a central Jewish text) counts acts of loving-kindness as one of the three pillars upon which the world stands.
O Lord, God of all, help us to live up to the standards we set ourselves. Give us insight into the needs and concerns of all whom we meet this day. Make us conscious of our obligations, and how they can add richness and meaning to our lives. Amen.
When I was a school chaplain an 11 year old once said to me: ‘I have one important question for you, and I’d like you to answer. I know that God loves us and God made us, but I want to know why God made Protestants.’
This was a Catholic child from West Belfast. The story of a people is present in the question of a child.
I asked her what she meant and why she wanted to ask it, and she said that she’d heard that Protestants hate God and hate Catholics.
She was easily put right. She was magnificent at football and I told her that every Protestant I knew would want her on their team, and she was delighted at the thought.
But still. The story of a people is present in the question of a child.
Joe Liechty and Cecelia Clegg, two researchers from the Irish School of Ecumenics have described sectarianism as ‘belonging gone bad’. This girl came from a lively and thriving community, yet somehow that belonging had, for a while, taught her terrible untruths about those who were different. Where else has belonging gone bad in our society today?
Often it seems like we need to make one identity superior to others; it seems like the borders of belonging can be more hostile than necessary.
In Irish, there’s a phrase: ‘It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.’ The word ‘shelter’ in Irish can also mean ‘shadow’. Belonging can turn both beautiful and bad.
God of all belonging, help us see beyond the borders of our belonging so that we might see beauty in faces as yet unfamiliar to us. Amen.
I grew up in Antigua, a tiny island in the Caribbean. Measuring 14 miles at its longest point and 11 miles at its widest, its coastline includes 365 white sandy beaches, one for each day of the year.
However, I live in Durham in the northeast of England, which also boasts a coastline of white sandy beaches, a number of which are stunning. Unless you know these two locations, you have no idea how much they have in common.
The similarities run deeper than coastlines. The population of Antigua is around 80,000. Coincidentally, the population of the city of Durham is of a similar order.
Perhaps precisely because of this small population, the cultural distance between people of the northeast of England and people of the eastern Caribbean is not as great as you might think. Though less ethnically diverse than Manchester or London, where I have previously lived, the northeast feels far more like home to me. We even speak the same language of cricket, for heaven’s sake! Perhaps best of all, I grew up in Antigua’s capital city, St John’s, and the name of the Durham college in which I work each day is also St John’s.
What is the point of this comparison? Durham and Antigua seem unlikely bedfellows. Yet once you get beyond obvious differences, it is possible to find common ground. One obvious difference is the temperature: Antigua is 30 degrees warmer than Durham! In this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, may we too find common ground.
Merciful God, forgive us when we fail to recognize in the other that there is more that binds us together than keeps us apart. Help us to see in the one who is different from us, one who is equally a child of God. Amen.
Anyone who thinks of Britain’s role in World War II will immediately mention Sir Winston Churchill, who died on this day in 1965. His political career began in 1900, when he was just 25. By that time, he bragged, he had written ‘as many books as Moses’.
Churchill was fascinated with Moses, and wrote about him in 1931 for the Sunday Chronicle. He took issue with those who believed that Moses was only an allegorical figure. He added: ‘We believe that the most scientific view … will find its fullest satisfaction in identifying one of the greatest human beings with the most decisive leap forward … in the human story.’ He meant, of course, the Exodus from Egypt. Churchill also praised Jewish monotheism and the ethical code transmitted at Mount Sinai. These, Churchill said, were central factors in the development of modern civilization.
Jewish ethics derive first and foremost from the Torah, the Hebrew Bible. We transcend our limited natural vision and aspire to perfection. In the Torah it’s not sufficient that we don’t harm others: we’re also obliged to assist our fellow human beings, because that’s our higher mission, given by God, the basis of all morality. Churchill disagreed that it was easier for the ancient Israelites to feel God’s presence, and hence the force of His moral code, than it is for us. They were, he said, ‘not so very different from ourselves’, and they communicated their impressions across the centuries ‘with far more accuracy than many of the … accounts we read of the goings-on of today’.
God and God of our ancestors, make us understand our higher goals and aspire to perfection, guided by You, who were there at the beginning, and will be, always. Amen.
It’s Burns Night tonight, held in honour of Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns. There will be Burns Night suppers all around Scotland to celebrate, with whisky, haggis and poetry readings. And, if it’s the full thing, participants will be piped in with the bagpipes and then say the ‘Selkirk Grace’ attributed to Burns: ‘Some hae meat and canna eat,/ And some wad eat that want it; / But we hae meat, and we can eat / Sae let the Lord be thankit.’
Then there’s the food, followed by speeches, and then people perform works by Burns, before it all ends with everyone singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which may not have been written by Burns at all!
It’s a great evening and a great celebration. It’s a celebration of Scottishness. It’s a celebration of traditions, including food. And it makes people feel good about themselves, mostly Scots, though others are often invited to join in. Its strongest attraction is that it binds people with a sense of community, not exclusive but warm and welcoming, and allows them to do more than just have a meal together – important though that is. There’s much to be said for celebratory dinners, and even more if they draw in people who are often forgotten. So let’s celebrate more often, invite more people for dinner and give them a chance to eat, drink and be merry – and be part of something that makes them proud of who they are, whether they be Scots, Irish, English, Welsh, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or whoever …
May we use the example of Burns Night to reach out, proud of our identity, to others who are proud of theirs, and share some traditions with each other in our busy lives. Amen.
Confucius told his disciple that three things are needed for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler can’t hold on to all three, he should give up the weapons first and the food next. Trust should be guarded to the end, as ‘without trust, we cannot stand’. Politicians, economists, philosophers and sociologists have all recently commented on the decline of trust. It is time to add a religious voice to the conversation.
There is a general perception that trust has declined, which particularly gathered momentum after the 2007 financial crisis and the (near) collapse of the banking sector. Some would say the financial markets lost sight of their moral duty and bad conduct (such as financial deception), and the failure of the banks to stay within the social (and moral) consensus have contributed to the decline in trust.
Although ‘trust’ is widely used in economics and finance, it is not primarily an economic or financial term. The key words in the markets are spiritual: ‘credit’ (from the Latin credo meaning ‘I believe’) and ‘confidence’ (meaning ‘shared faith’). Indeed, United States coins bear the motto ‘In God We Trust’.
Trust is relational: it cannot be commanded but needs to be given freely. And rebuilding a culture of trust requires good conduct.
This is the virtue of religion and is fulfilled by proper religious practice, which frees us from the tyranny of false gods – and there are many, including Mammon – that claim our attention. GK Chesterton famously said: ‘When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.’
Lord, help us strive to rebuild the trust our society so urgently needs. Amen.
A story is told of how, after World War II, relief agencies scoured Europe in search of Jewish children who had been hidden by their parents with gentiles. In one case, an American rabbi called Eliezer Silver learned of a convent in Alsace-Lorraine in which a number of Jewish children were meant to be found. He approached the Mother Superior with his claim, and was told that there were only Christian orphans, all baptized, in her care.
Nevertheless, he insisted on seeing the children, who in some cases had been separated from their parents for more than five years, and would have had no opportunity to practise their Jewish faith. He was granted five minutes, just before bedtime. He entered the dormitory, and whispered softly in Hebrew ‘Shema Yisrael’ (‘Hear O Israel’). At first he heard nothing, and so he whispered again, ‘Shema Yisrael’. Suddenly he heard a child whimpering; he went over to the little bed, and said a third time, ‘Hear O Israel’, and a small, broken voice answered ‘Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad’ (‘The Lord is our God, the Lord is one’). He heard the same response from across the room, and so confirmed that some of these children were in fact Jewish. He was allowed to leave with these child victims of the Holocaust, who eventually made their way to Israel.
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, which commemorates, among the many who died, one and a half million children of many faiths. We give thanks that in our day, in many parts of the world, children can live their lives without fear of being harmed for who they are, and are able to express themselves and their faiths in a free and open fashion.
Lord God of all, on this most solemn of days, hold dearly to Yourself the children, for in them is our brightest hope for a better future. Amen.
Bertrand Russell once said that if God exists, then He has written a detective story with all the clues pointing the wrong way.
I understand what he means.
Somehow you feel that the biggest thing there is ought to be visible in some way. Why, if God is there, is He so elusive?
Judaism is a religion of questions. The greatest prophets asked questions of God, and famously Job asked the most searching questions and God replied with a few questions of His own.
Abraham Twerski, the Harvard scholar, tells the story of his Polish teacher being delighted when he asked a good question. ‘You are right,’ he would be told, ‘you are 100 per cent right and now I will tell you where you have gone wrong.’