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A reflection and prayer to start the day with the Revd Dr Craig Gardiner, a tutor and chaplain at Cardiff Baptist College.

Good morning.

As we move into August, many shops seem to have already replaced their colourful promotions of holiday sandals and buckets and spades with the more sombre colours of back-to-school shoes, sensible coats and uniforms. I can’t help but feel a little regret, as my long imagined sunny days of fun, seem to be prematurely banished into history.

But it wasn’t just the new school year that caught my attention this week. It was also the red and green advertisements, enticing me to join the supermarket Christmas Club. Already! And, here is my dilemma. I’m not happy about leaving the summer behind too soon, but neither do I like being precipitately pulled towards the birth of Jesus and the cultural festivities that go with that. Instead, I want to be present to the here and the now. Because being part of the moment, whatever might be happening, is a valuable treasure in life.

Jesus told a story where living with God was compared to a jewel merchant hunting for pearls. When they found one that was absolutely flawless, they sold everything they had make it theirs.

Maybe one of the valuable things about a life, is being attentive to what’s happening in the present. The Welsh poet RS Thomas clearly thought so. In the poem ‘The Bright Field’, he says, ‘life is not hurrying on to a receding future, not hankering after an imagined past’ but ‘it is the turning aside’ to pay attention to the moment illuminated by God – that could be our miracle for today.

Dear God,
Help us to be present to hidden treasures of today:
May the people we meet,
and the events of this day,
break upon our lives
like bright sunlight on a field,
drawing our attention to a moment spent with you.
Amen.