大象传媒

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Haydon Spenceley

Good morning.

I have loved history all my life. I used to be good at remembering dates of kings and queens, rulers, wars and battles in medieval times. All the sorts of things that we get taught about through school. Later on I got to be more interested in social history, what made people tick in times past, who they were, how towns and cities developed, that sort of thing. At once both a bit esoteric but also crucially important to and how we are who we are today. Human beings have always fundamentally had similar natures even if we view things differently in each generation.

I鈥檓 regularly reminded for instance, that this is one of the first generations that I as a disabled person in the UK have been mostly physically safe and likely to live an in inverted commas normal way in all of our history. That's a bit mad (and scary) when you think about it, isn鈥檛 it? And something that we must work hard to maintain, for the future.

The point of history for me is to learn well for today and live well today and to set the right tone for tomorrow. There has been wisdom in the past as well as failure and we do well to listen and to learn to both.

If we鈥檝e failed in the past we can feel like that is what defines the story of our lives. But it doesn鈥檛 have to. All of us have failed and fallen short both of God鈥檚 glory and God鈥檚 best for us. But there is hope. Asking for help, for mercy, and the chance to live and learn from the past into the present and the future is a good way to start today.

Thank you for the good, the bad and the ugly in my history, for all I have learned and all I am yet to learn. Help me to to learn to trust and follow your way today.

Amen