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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day, with Debbie Thrower of the Bible Reading Fellowship and founding Anna Chaplain.

Good morning.

If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard someone in a care home say to me, ‘Why am I here?’ or ‘What’s the point of me anymore? I hate being a burden’, or words to that effect… I’d be rolling by now! We prize autonomy highly.

We want to be independent for as long as we can, for all sorts of reasons;

Yet, somehow we’ve forgotten that there’s a natural cycle to life. Just as we start life as babies dependent on others - so the later stages of our lives, especially if they’re long ones (and that’s increasingly the case for many)… mean coming to terms with that stage in our development is just as vital as at other times.

I have the privilege of being the founder and pioneer of Anna Chaplaincy, which works across the UK to provide chaplaincy for older people. In his address when he was commissioning Anna Chaplains in Bromley in 2018, Archbishop Justin Welby said that ‘dependence on other people’ is the way God has designed life and, therefore, ‘no-one is less valued when they are being cared for.*

So much of faith is expressed verbally, he said, ‘to the extent that when we can no longer articulate our beliefs there may be a feeling God has gone away, but he is still there, and he remembers us even when we don’t. We are held in the memory of God from the beginning to the end of our life’.

Lord, please forgive me when I forget you amid the details of life. Thank you that you remember me and that when my life ends you will, literally, re-member me, put me back together again, in the safety of your eternal love.

Amen

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