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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.

One Sunday my late colleague Stephen introduced the general confession with the words: ‘Before we confess our sins, let’s take a few moments to thank God for the things we’ve got right this week.’ Stephen, a psychotherapist, explained afterwards, ‘A lot of people beat themselves up for their shortcomings; I wanted to focus on the positive.’

Christianity has an unfortunate reputation for pushing guilt onto people. I’m afraid there’s some truth in that; if you reduce Jesus’ mission to forgiving sins, its necessary to convince people they are sinners who need forgiveness. But though the forgiving of our sins is an important part of what Jesus achieved, it’s not the whole story. Why spend three years preaching and teaching, when he could have achieved his aim by dying in the first week of his public ministry?

Jesus taught us how to live. He told us that God cares about the poor, the humble, the grieving, the merciful. He told us to treat others as we would like to be treated. He said it’s more important to love God and each other than to live by a rigid set of rules. He spent time down the pub with low lifes, eating and drinking and enjoying himself.

Hymn writer Isaac Watts, who wrote the much loved hymn ‘When I Survey the Wondrous cross’, also wrote these lines:

The sorrows of the mind
Be banished from the place;
Religion never was designed
To make our pleasures less.

Let those refuse to sing,
Who never knew our God;
But children of the heav’nly King
May speak their joys abroad.

Loving God, thank you for the beauty around us, the love we share, and the things we get right.

Amen.

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