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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Anne Easter

Good morning!

If all goes well, I’ll meet up with my friend Sheila for lunch today. I’ve known Sheila ever since we met many years ago at Guy’s Hospital where we were training to be nurses; we discovered that we had lots in common and so began a life-long friendship. We’ve never lived very close to one another so we might meet only three or four times a year but when we do get together, we immediately pick up where we left off and I know that today we’ll still be talking as we get in our cars to go home.

While we were having dinner together one evening a few years ago, Sheila had a call to say that her father, who’d been ill for some time, was now dying. For various reasons, she couldn’t go to be with him there and then. As the evening went on, I agonised about whether or not I should suggest that we might say a prayer – I’m not Sheila’s priest, I’m her friend, and I wasn’t sure how she’d feel about it. As we left the restaurant, I tentatively asked if she’d like us to pray together. And we prayed, it was probably just at the time when her father’s soul left this earth and I treasure the card that Sheila wrote, thanking me for my ministry that night.

There’s so many different ways of being a friend; with some people, we’re together just for a season, with others, it’s for life. Sometimes it’s comfort and encouragement we need from our friends. Sometimes we don’t know what benefit we bring our friends – and we may never find out. And, of course, being a friend means that we learn about another person and their life but it also means that we learn about ourselves.

Jesus, thank you for blessing us with friends. Help us to be a good friend to someone somehow, today.

Amen