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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with the Revd Dr Rosa Hunt, Minister at Tabernacle Chapel Cardiff and Co-Principal of Cardiff Baptist College.

Good morning.

In many cultures, today is a day for remembering the dead.

Hallowe鈥檈n can be fun for kids; it can be terrifying for elderly people; it is certainly a huge money-spinner for the shops. But perhaps it鈥檚 also a way for our culture to talk about fear, death and grief. Because the truth is that when we lose someone we really love, we do remember. Grief stores up that memory in our bodies. After losing our son nearly two years ago, grief has lodged itself in every muscle of my body. It鈥檚 changed the way that I sleep, and my ability to remember things and handle social situations. I used to think that to be heartbroken meant to be extremely sad. I now realise that in times of extreme grief, our heart simply cannot produce normal emotions 鈥� it鈥檚 broken.

鈥淪omeone I loved once gave me a box of darkness. It took many years to understand that this too was a gift鈥�, wrote the (American) poet Mary Oliver. With the love and support of others, grief can turn us into less fearful and more compassionate people.

Loving God,
On this day when death is acted out all around us, we pray for those for whom death is a bitter reality. For all those who grieve, we ask that they may have the courage and the loving support to allow that grief to transform them into more resilient and more loving people, instead of being trapped in a place of dark despair. We ask this in the name of Jesus, whose resurrection broke the power of death to destroy us.
Amen.