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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev Janet Fife, retired vicar and one of the first women to be ordained.

Good morning.

’30 years younger? The science of age reversal;’ ’11 steps to looking younger.’ We see articles with similar headlines every day. But why aren’t we content with looking the age we are?

Children are in a hurry to be grown up. Older adults want to be younger .In the average lifespan of 80 years, it’s a shame to waste most of it wishing our lives away.

All around us we see evidence of changing seasons. The moon waxes and wanes, tides flow and ebb.

I used to be a trustee of a retreat house on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. For me and many of our visitors, having to live within the natural framework of the tides was part of what we gained from our spiritual retreats. There are always visitors to Lindisfarne who refuse to submit to the incoming tide and pay the price. ‘I drove into the North Sea’ doesn’t wear too well with insurance companies.

Our lives too have tides and seasons: times of success and failure, gain and loss, fruitfulness and futility, health and illness. There is contentment in learning to live within them.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.

Creator God, help us to accept and be at peace with the seasons of our lives.

Amen.

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