麻豆约拍

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with The Rt Revd Dr Rosemarie Mallett, Bishop of Croydon

Good morning.

I love the early morning, the burgeoning of dawn and the early sounds of life inside and outside the house. Wherever you are in the world the new day awakens with familiar ritual and sounds, kettles boiling for tea, airplanes roaring overheard, vehicles rumbling past, voices murmuring people pat by on their way to or from work. For those of us who can hear them, we often take them for granted and become a bit noise blind to mix senses. During the initial phase of the first lockdown in the United Kingdom, when cars, buses and planes were stopped and grounded, most people noticed the quiet, the absence of familiar sounds.

Sound is very much part of the rhythm of our lives. Hearing is one of our key senses, influencing our ability to listen and to learn, and enabling us to connect and respond to the world and to people.

Some years back, a young couple close to me were told that their very prematurely born son would be profoundly deaf and possible unable to speak also. Like every parent, they worried how he would be able to communicate with others, how they would communicate with him, and how they could help him develop and grow. However, they never doubted that their child, who had been knit together in his mother鈥檚 womb, was truly fearfully and wonderfully made. Today we marvel at how well he has grown, and how he is living his best life, as young people often say, hearing aids and all.

Loving God, help us to remember that we are all wonderfully made, all created in the image of God.

Amen.