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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Bishop David Walker

Good Morning.

Along with cold turkey, a staple of my childhood Boxing Day routine was watching football in the afternoon. God and the weather willing, I’ll be doing that later today. Boxing Day games of old always had a special feel. Not only were the crowd imbued with Christmas spirit, many of the players, bound by less rigorous regimes than today, had also palpably enjoyed the food and drink of the previous 24 hours. Playing standards could be somewhat erratic, with as much to laugh at as to cheer. The results often failed to reflect the teams’ league positions.

I saw, and appreciated, in those games, that my sporting heroes were not simply men who could run fast and accurately kick a ball, they were husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. Nowadays they’d be sisters, wives, mums and daughters too. They had lives beyond the game, people who mattered to them more, even, than football. By contrast, the punishing schedules of training and fitness to which quite young girls and boys are often nowadays subjected, in the name of sporting excellence, deeply worry me, even if they are not accompanied by performance enhancing drugs. So my prayer this day is for all who aspire to make their living from professional sport.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the skills of foot, hand and eye, through which you endow your children with sporting prowess. We thank you for the enjoyment and inspiration their achievements can bring to the lives of so many. And so, we pray for all who have, or hope for, careers in sport. Protect them from demands that detract from their humanity, or regimes that abuse their minds and bodies. Help them to live well and fully, and to value their lives beyond the accumulation of trophies and medals.

Amen.