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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Canon Angela Tilby

Good morning.

Late July often marks endings, particularly for young people as the school year draws to a close. There may have been special events, proms, sports days, plays and performances. For many this is a chance to say goodbye, to end this phase of life as well as we can, relishing perhaps for the last time, the company of those whose lives have crossed with ours.

In the last week of my university life I got into conversation with a student I had not known very well. We had done different courses, we had different friends. We hadn’t deliberately avoided each other but we hadn’t really met either. And now it was too late and we both knew it. So we chatted about nothing very much for a few minutes and then as our conversation petered out she said to me, a bit awkwardly, ‘Well, have a nice life!’ It was an extraordinary thing to say, because it suddenly opened up the unknown vista of what lay ahead, a future neither of us could see.

I am sure I responded with something obvious like, ‘You too’. It was a casual conversation, but it made a lasting impression. I often thought her words were a kind of benediction, a blessing I was being given and which I haltingly tried to return. There was a finality about our words to one another. We could not rerun the past. But we could still be grateful. Our transitions through time are always an opportunity to bless and be blessed.

I remember these words from a hymn by Kevin Nichols, "Take all we start and spoil, each hopeful dream, the chances we have missed the graces we resist, Lord……redeem".