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Good morning. During the first week of March in 1869, the scientist Dmitri Mendeleev made a presentation to the Russian Chemical Society of an interesting classification of the elements which he had come up with. Although this wasn’t the first attempt to systematically order the chemical elements, Mendeleev’s table was unique and is what we now refer to as the Periodic Table, It is an amazingly beautiful and powerful tool which fascinates me not least because it allows us to make predictions about how elements are going to behave!  For me, part of the intoxicating power of maths and science is their ability to provide reliable predictions for the behaviour of the world around us.
Some areas of life however can be far less predictable. People, in particular, don’t always behave as we think they will. Many of the best stories we know, including Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, are memorable because the characters in them do things that we simply wouldn’t expect, given what we know about them.
And I like to think that’s because human beings are made in the image of God, and God is a God not of prediction, but of potential. For me that’s a source of great comfort and hope and it serves to remind us all that as God’s creation, there is nothing inevitable about how our story will unfold - we are free to make our own choices, safe in the knowledge that the God who created us will never give up on us and will always encourage us to reach our true potential 
Creator God Thank you for all the gifts that you give us, and the huge capacity we have to change the world for good. Help us to take hold of the full potential that you offer us today, Amen.