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A reflection and prayer to start the day with the Rev Lynne Gibson.

PRAYER FOR THE DAY 2ND OCTOBER 2021

Good morning.
I tend to set many alarms each morning, an alarm clock, my phone my smart watch. Even on so-called leisure days, we find ourselves dictated to by multiple alarms, paper diaries and electronic reminders.
Nature abhors a vacuum, scientists tell us – and we can fear an empty day. We strive to fill our time, and are busy, burdened and in perpetual motion. And so we still have no time to do the things that we’d like to do – if only we had time…
Over sixty years ago the French priest Michel Quoist wrote the prayer ‘Lord, I have time’ which still resonates powerfully today.
‘And so all men run after time, Lord. They pass through life running – hurried, jostled, overburdened, frantic and they never get there. In spite of all their efforts, they’re still short of time’.
It’s a sombre picture of those who spend their lives chasing after time, with no time for what is important. And yet these recent days have been also a time of spiritual and emotional awakening for us, a realisation that time is a gift, and that our pressures are not just external, but of our own making.
We can cram our time with endless ‘stuff’, until we have no time, as the poet WH Davies wrote ‘to stop and stare’. Or we can wake up, hear the birdsong, appreciate the beauty of the created world, and take joy in the small things of life. Filling our days with activity means that we have no time to look deep into our own souls and commune with God.
‘The days of my life…are mine to fill, quietly calmly but completely to the brim’ Quoist wrote.
Lord help us to cherish our time this day as we celebrate the gift of ‘now’. Amen