鲍鱼tv

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Sarah Teather, Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service UK

Good morning

My four-year-old niece started school a few weeks ago. She walked excitedly on the first day in her sparkly pink wellies, dragging her new friend by the hand behind her, pausing only to pose for a photo, with her tongue out... It's fair to say that they鈥檙e going to have their hands full.

It was a good reminder though that for all the drama and unpredictability of this period, time marches on, while life in the present continues to offer moments we can choose to grasp with both hands.

As lockdowns in various varieties gather pace, and family visits, music making and more besides gets postponed again, I have had to fight the temptation in myself to think of this phase as life on hold, a diversion from the main route. What has been exposed instead, Pope Francis says, is our vulnerability, and the 鈥渇alse and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, projects 鈥� and priorities."

The invitation is to be attentive to what the Holy Spirit is doing now, here, in this upended space, as it really is, as we really are, and then to, as Francis says, 鈥渟eize this time as one of choosing: 鈥�what matters鈥� what passes away; 鈥�to separate what is necessary from what is not鈥�.

To choose life鈥�.which is to choose love鈥� love of God and one another. Not in the abstract, theoretical sense, but in the particular and individual; trusting that life will find ways of making itself seen, as it eagerly awaits our choice, even (in our own eyes at least), in this less than perfect now.

Lord, you are love and you are life; make your ways known to us that we may choose what is true.

Amen

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