Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Good morning to you. I’m speaking to you from Salisbury, where for a week or two every spring there are literally millions of daffodils along the main roads and in the public spaces. They’ve gone now for another year. But out in the Wiltshire lanes there are flowers everywhere, and in the woods the bluebells are almost as spectacular as the daffs. With lambs playing and birds singing, it’s all enough to bring a smile to your lips – and I can almost hear Louis Armstrong joining in!
Several years ago I spent a day learning about some of the other realities behind that idyllic scene. I heard about hamlets and villages where nearly all the houses are second homes, empty for much of the year. I heard about local people unable to afford a house, and young people having to move away or face unemployment. Elderly people, we were told, were often desperately lonely. And there were striking statistics about how in a whole valley, there are now only a handful of farm workers, where, a generation or two ago, there were several hundred. 
Of course, it’s not only in the countryside that such realities have to be faced. In city streets, as the daffodils fade, there are reminders of poverty, and the hostel for homeless people round the corner from our home is always full. We live with these contrasts every day.  To overlook the beauty around us is to miss opportunities for thanks and praise. To overlook the sadnesses and problems many grapple with all the time, is to turn our backs on the neighbours we’re asked by God to love.
Lord of all, of rich and poor, of loved and those who feel unloved: keep us alive today to all that delights us, and all that troubles us. Amen.