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Good morning. Courage is a rather strange thing. You never know whether you have it, until you have little choice but to display it. You cannot easily practice it, or cultivate it, and yet we often think of it as a virtue, something to be greatly admired. Courage is the subject of many school assemblies, particularly at this time of year, when exams looms and children and young people need to be reminded that there is more to life than an A grade. It makes for great stories – heroic feats, clear and present danger, people who achieve more than they ever could have imagined. Wonderful stories, yet often a little removed and inaccessible. Who gets to face a giant or a lion in daily life? For most of us, and especially our children, courage is found in the small steps of life, in things neither glamorous nor greatly admired. Instead, courage is facing another day when life seems to be just too difficult; it is making conversation when shyness leaves you shaking; it is daring to be yourself against false expectations. It is standing up for justice when it is so much easier to look the other way. How do you teach courage though? You cannot test for it. Even if you could, what takes great courage for me may be an easy win for you. Courage can only be grown one seed at a time, in the soil of real life experience. The command that appears most frequently in the Bible is, ‘do not be afraid’, followed closely by, ‘take courage’. This has always struck me as ironic: we only need to be told not to be afraid if there is clearly something to be afraid of. There is however usually a second part, ‘do not be afraid, for I am with you’. Courage is located not so much in extraordinary individual resilience, but in trusting that we are not alone. Not in heroic feats, but in walking persistently in the right direction. So how do we nurture courage? Maybe, by recognising the barriers others are facing, and coming alongside them, so they are not walking alone. By valuing and cherishing small steps as much as we stand in awe of those who face more than we could imagine. And celebrating stories of every day courage, from the school girl bullied for picking up litter on her way home, to the extraordinary story of Tom Ray, who lost both arms and legs to sepsis and had to relearn to live, day after day after day. Courage often is nothing more, and nothing less, than facing another day.