麻豆约拍

A reflection and prayer to start the day with Rev Cheryl Meban

Good morning.

As we emerge hopefully from the worst of COVID, many people 鈥� too long cooped up, long for a change of scene, a move of home, or just a holiday. Some have lost jobs and can鈥檛 pay rent. Migration is a fact of life and sometimes with armies, sometimes with nothing, or from sheer curiosity and a spirit of adventure.

Also on this day in the year 793, on the beautiful Lindisfarne Island, in the North-East of England, Vikings arriving in longboats visited St Cuthbert鈥檚 monastery, not to pray or seek wisdom or blessing, but to plunder and slaughter. Alcuin of York wrote to his bishop, "They have desecrated God's sanctuary, shed the blood of saints around the altar, laid waste the house of our hope and trampled the bodies of the saints like dung on the street." People were shocked. Why would God allow such a thing?

The account resonates emotionally with stories of attacks in London, Oklahoma, Rwanda, Belfast, New York, Israel-Palestine, Central African Republic; violence by strangers creates terror and hatred for generations. Yet violence by loved ones, intimate partners or sometimes our 鈥渙wn sort鈥� can be somehow normalised, internalised.

Creator of All, of us and them, both here and there, teach us humanity that reflects your generous and courageous love. In all our encounters, relationships and travels, whether we are on an ego-trip, or a religious pilgrimage,, show us how our arrival in another place, in another鈥檚 life, can be experienced as unwelcome invasion. You cross heavens and earth to make peace with us. Make us makers of peace. Amen.