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Spiritual reflection to start the day with writer and broadcaster, Anna Magnusson

Good morning.

Sometimes I forget how very early Prayer for the Day is broadcast. 5.43 am. A time - for most of us - before the routine of the day has begun. A time on its own.

For me, last thing at night is also a space like this. The moment when I’ve closed whichever book I’m reading, and time has slowed down. When I was a child, that was when I began to worry about the next day – what would happen at school? Was my homework correct? I still remember, all these decades later, how that fretting felt.

Now, there are far more important things to worry about last thing at night. Not just to do with family and friends - but a whole world which we see on television or a phone screen. Snuggling down under warm blankets feels wonderful - but also sometimes uncomfortable when you’ve just watched reports of war and hunger.

Most nights before I turn off the light, I read my Bible. Often it’s the shortest passages that stay with me for days after – the brief, spare stories which capture a moment of meeting or interaction. The one in my head this morning is the encounter in the village of Nain between Jesus and the widow who’s lost her only son. She’s walking beside the funeral procession, crying. These are the words in Luke’s gospel; ‘When the Lord saw her; his heart went out to her, and he said, ‘Don’t cry’.

And after he raises her son, there come the words which, for me, are the most moving of all: ‘and Jesus gave him back to his mother.’ All hurt healed, all loss restored.

I pray this morning for those who grieve, and are afraid, and for whom miracles feel far away. May they be comforted. Amen.