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Good morning.Ìý For the last 7days the Queens Baton Relay has been visiting Wales and today it moves into England on its way to the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.ÌýÌýAll over the Commonwealth since it left Buckingham Palace last October, the baton has been cheering people up.Ìý It hasn’t just been advertising the Games but has been giving richly deserved public attention both to the athletes who’ll be competing and to local heroes who have been selected to carry the baton for a leg of the relay.ÌýÌý

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I have to admit that most of the time I pay very little attention to sport.Ìý And there’s a bit of me that feels slightly guilty about that.Ìý But I do get into the landmark events.Ìý The athletes who provide so much excitement for a couple of weeks at the major events have been working away – determinedly and often painfully - for years in order to put on the big performance.ÌýÌý My week or two of entertainment has cost them years of sacrifice.

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For the athletes, these events are just the tip of an iceberg of hard and dedicated work by people who know that if something is worthwhile it’s worth working for.Ìý Their performance on the day is only as good as the years of hard training – often lonely and unseen – that built up to it.Ìý

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The Apostle Paul, I’m pretty confident, was no athlete.Ìý But he uses the example of an athlete’s training to give us a real understanding of what the life of faith should look like.Ìý An authentic Christian life, Paul says, is about working hard and consistently day by day to truly live out Christian values; care for others and true faithfulness to the Gospel when no-one else is watching.Ìý

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Father; thank You for the inspiring example of women and men who are willing to make the daily sacrifices needed to achieve excellence in athletics.Ìý May we learn from their example that how we live our daily lives is the true fulfilment of our faith.Ìý Amen.