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

Good morning.

I can鈥檛 get out of my mind at the moment those school leavers who are waiting for important exam results. GCSE鈥檚 will be announced four weeks today, and A levels three weeks today. It鈥檚 many years since I took an exam but its only comparatively recently that my dreams caught up with me - for years I used to have exam anxiety dreams. You know the sort of thing. You can鈥檛 find the room where the exam is being held, or you get there, turn over the paper and find you have revised the wrong book, or you are sitting an exam in a language you don鈥檛 know. I would sometimes wake up gasping with terror.

In reality, though I was always nervous before exams I was one of those people who tended to rise to the challenge and stuffed myself with facts effectively enough to get through. That doesn鈥檛 mean I always reached real understanding. I have cheerfully forgotten everything I once knew about, for example, the unification of Italy, or William Henry Hudson鈥檚 (to me) rather dreary novel Far Away and Long Ago.

Testing of one kind or another is part of life and we face it all the time, in our work and relationships, in our inner attitudes, in our ability to persevere in difficulty and bounce back in defeat. Every test we face is an experiment: we try ourselves against reality. It鈥檚 nice to pass of course, it鈥檚 nice to win, but the real point is the way testing shows us the truth about ourselves, and encourages us to tread boldly into the next phase of life.

So, today, good Lord, in trial and temptation keep us faithful; in success keep is humble, in defeat, give us the faith to try again.