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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with The Rt Revd Dr Jo Bailey Wells, Bishop of Dorking

Good morning.

‘It won’t always be like this’. I think we know that, yet it’s helpful to be reminded, whether from the song by Carly Pearce or on the sign I saw outside the University of Surrey the other day. I keep saying it every time another plan gets cancelled or postponed.
Whatever tier we’re in, one of the many challenges of the pandemic is that it closes down our horizons. We hunker down. We nurse our disappointments. We try to be grateful for less and less.

It’s fascinating that in these circumstances the statistics suggest that more and more people are seeking for faith, participating in church, and turning to prayer. It is the claims of faith that are defiant in declaring ‘It won’t always be like this’! What we see is NOT all there is. The God who made this world has made another, and it will be beautiful.

Such a declaration is not just wishful thinking. Christian hope is more grounded than that, founded on promises from several thousand years before Christ, so many of which have already come true. Our current circumstances underline the very definition of joy which is about nostalgia for all that lies ahead. ‘It won’t always be like this’. Indeed: it will be so much better.

And prayer is precisely the way we raise our horizons and put that hope into practice.

All-knowing and all-loving God: we thank you for the world you have made but we thank you even more for your commitment to re-make it. In the midst of our current struggles we pray we may live in the hope and joy of the future you have purposed beyond: through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.