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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day, with Debbie Thrower of the Bible Reading Fellowship and founding Anna Chaplain.

Good morning.

Needing care can creep up on you. In the Quakers’ pamphlet, Advices and Queries* we’re advised to approach ageing with courage and hope. It says: ‘As far as possible, make arrangements for your care in good time, so that an undue burden does not fall on others.’

Acknowledging that old age may bring increasing disability and loneliness, it points out that it can also bring serenity, detachment and wisdom. None of this is easy, of course, but these are prizes worth striving for. There are tasks to be accomplished in mastering the art of ageing well. Australian researcher, Elizabeth McKinlay, has identified four such tasks in our later years: to transcend difficulty, disability and loss; to search for final meanings; to find intimacy with God; and to have hope.

How do we set our compass so that we travel in the right direction towards attaining such goals? I return once more to the Quaker Way which has distilled such a direction of travel into just one sentence: ‘Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness’; less, may just be more. What love requires may mean doing fewer things better? Busyness may be a trap we set for ourselves that has more to do with ego than with rewards that actually matter.

Dear Lord, please meet me in my making of ‘to do’ lists. Help me to stop for a moment and consider what love requires of me at this time, for me, as well as for the benefit of all those to whom I relate.

Amen