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Good morning.  Monday morning.   The start of another week.   I often wonder if it’s an illusion - the way we invent beginnings?  I mean, isn’t today simply another day in a long chain of days?  But we call it the start of something.  Maybe it’s our way of helping ourselves to be hopeful.  

We have a great need of new beginnings because we know how easy it is for things to go not quite as we’d planned. We have good intentions but our own weakness, or someone else’s, sets things awry.  

I’m a planner. I like to make a list of tasks and get through them in order. Sometimes I overdo this planning and topple into perfectionist overdrive, trying to be the perfect wife, the perfect employee, the perfect daughter and, yes, I get perfectly stressed! 

I mean well but I have to admit that often what motivates my efforts is fear, the fear of being wrong, and, I suppose, I must fear some kind of punishment or that everything will fall apart if I don’t try hard enough. 

The truth is, keeping everything together isn’t all down to me.   There’s not a single one of us who can control every aspect of our lives and, as Jesus put it, ‘which one of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?’  

Instead of anxiety he asks us to go on a search for a kingdom, the Father’s kingdom, which is ruled by love. That search means letting love be what motivates us, not fear.  We will get anxious – we’re only human – but God isn’t asking us to be superhuman. He asks us to believe that he’s a loving father who knows what we need; a Father who doesn’t mind how many new beginnings we have to make. 

So, Father, as the week begins, help us to believe in your love which is bigger than our weakness; your love which is our true energy, love for ourselves and for one another, so that your kingdom comes.   Amen