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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with George Craig, a Methodist local preacher in Cardiff.

Good morning. I really wish I knew where the world’s biggest collection of rhubarb varieties is. I have looked but not even the internet can tell me. However, I do know where the world’s second biggest collection is – because that’s how it publicises itself. It’s at Clumber Park in Nottinghamshire, which is run by the National Trust. And just before the first lockdown I fulfilled a long-held ambition and went to see it.

It’s in an old walled Garden where there are over 130 varieties of rhubarb growing, many of them very rare and even endangered. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but to be perfectly honest it was a bit of a let-down at first. One variety of rhubarb - to the untrained eye – looks very much like another. Once we started looking more carefully and closely we began to see that there were differences, but they were very subtle.

But to the people who run that garden – which is the national Rhubarb collection – every one of those plants is unique and precious.

It was an interesting experience, but I came away with a niggling thought at the back of my mind.

And that thought was this - what may look to me like the great undifferentiated mass of humanity looks to God like a huge collection of unique and precious individuals. And that’s how I should see them, too. What niggled me was that it took a field of rhubarb to teach me that.

Lord , help us to remember that every one of us is unique and precious in your sight, and to treat each other accordingly. Amen