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Good morning. In the early hours of tomorrow, British Summer Time will come to an end; so I’ll be turning the clock back before I go to bed tonight, and I’m delighted, because I have an early start with Sunday morning Church services, and I’m going to relish every minute of that extra hour.

But I’m also disappointed that so many of the clocks, phones and watches in our house change the time automatically… because I enjoy physically turning the clock back: it’s empowering, as though I’m adding an extra hour to the coming day.

Film makers and writers have long used the concept of time travel to make us wonder whether we could turn the clock back to times in our lives or moments in history, and do a few things differently, right some wrongs and avoid some mistakes along the way.

Yet I wonder what would happen if we really could turn back time, and be confronted by those occasions when we might make a different decision, be bolder or, perhaps, a bit more humble?

But, there again, we don’t need to be time travellers to address the mistakes of the past.  We can, already, do everything in our power to heal a friendship, or reconcile a situation, fractured by an action or a word out of place, that we now deeply regret.  That will undoubtedly demand more from us than the simple action of turning the dial on a clock; and I believe we have the potential to challenge ourselves to extend a hand of reconciliation, or to be brave enough to swallow our pride, for the sake of a relationship we truly value.

Perhaps we can start to see our lives and our individual and collective actions afresh, and hold onto the teachings of Jesus, who reminds us that there is no shortcoming that can’t be forgiven and no person beyond redemption.

God of endless power and boundless possibility, God of extraordinary love, whose forgiveness flows so readily from your heart; turn our minds and hearts from all that has gone before us, so that we can rejoice in the possibility of everything that is to come.  Amen.