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Spiritual reflection to start the day with Rev Richard Frazer of the Church of Scotland.

Good morning. In the churches where I have ministered over the years, I have always been committed to the idea of building communities of hope and love. We need hope in our lives as the power that helps us simply to get out of bed each morning to face the day. And whoever we are, we need to feel that we belong and are part of a community that cares. I have come across so many people over the years without those two things - belonging and being cared for - and it can be utterly devastating. In our churches, one of the things that we do is to promote faith. There have been numerous strategies over my years as a minister in which the church has sought to win back generations that have been lost to faith.

I’ve sometimes reflected that we get it the wrong way round if we don’t first kindle hope and create communities where people feel loved and a sense of belonging.
St Paul famously wrote in his letter to the Corinthian church that ‘faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love’.

It feels to me that we have often relegated hope and love and promoted faith as the principal purpose of the church. Surely, faith emerges out of hope and love, not the other way about. Not long ago a woman joined the church where I was minister. She had come to some social and arts events in the church for a while and then started coming to services. ‘I came for the friendship and stayed for the prayers’, were the words she used to sum up her journey towards faith.

Christ of the welcoming heart, you kindled hope in those you met and embraced with love those who had lost their way. Help your churches to be beacons of light in a world that can be dark, and heralds of hope where hopelessness can weigh heavy. Amen.