蜜芽传媒

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with The Right Reverend John Arnold, Bishop of Salford

Good morning.

I wonder how these months of pandemic may have affected you and your family? We have never experienced anything like this in our generation. It was quite a shock to suddenly be faced with a lockdown last March, effective within a few days - which restricted travel, limited our choices, separated us from family and friends. All that was a sudden inconvenience for everyone but then the on-going effect was felt by people in different ways. There was the introduction of furloughing which ushered in the prospect of redundancy for many people, or at least uncertainty about future employment. Small businesses closing, the hospitality industry in crisis. Churches, shops and public spaces closed. There were all the adjustments for so many people who had to learn how to work from home, of the problems of families stranded in small flats and apartments, with young children to be home-schooled, with or without proper access to online learning. There was also the growing shadows of mental stress and the effect on the elderly in care homes or the housebound who were distanced from family members.

All these difficulties in our crisis pose a question to us. Are we courageous enough to learn and to change, to seek new priorities for building a better society where our priority is genuinely our care for those around us, everyone in our wider family?

Lord, guide us in changing direction. Help us, through dialogue, encounter and compassion to build global understanding, with care for all our brothers and sisters in our global family so that no-one is left behind and no-one is beyond reach.

Amen.