BBC Radio 4 - Prayer for the Day Volume II: More Reflections for Daily Inspiration

Prayer for the Day

Theres a spiritual instinct in us all, and very few people do not at some stage in their lives find themselves praying, in one form or another. Often, its a crisis that brings us to our knees. But sometimes its the sheer joy of being alive that makes us want to find someone to thank for our good fortune.

I love Prayer for the Day. You never quite know where the days chosen prayer will take you. Theres a serendipity about it, and Im often surprised by the prayers relevance not just to the days events but also to my own personal life.

The programme suits early-risers like myself. I catch it as I surface from slumber and lie there, half-asleep and half-awake, while my soul catches up with my body. But this book is also for those whose body clock works differently! If youre not up in time for the radio broadcasts, these pages show you what youre missing.

All religions teach us about praying. Whatever else they tell us about the mysteries of life, they all agree that to be human is to pray. The prayers and reflections in this collection are geared to equip us to face whatever life throws at us each day. They give us words to respond to the vagaries of being alive. They connect us to our common world, at the same time lifting us above it to become a little less attached and slightly more objective about our circumstances. And, in doing so, we begin to discern some values and principles of universal application.

I often pray aloud when Im out walking. With the proliferation of mobile phones and earpieces, the whole world now looks as if its talking to itself, so I dont feel quite so self-conscious! But people have been praying aloud for generations. In fact, it was when the disciples of Jesus heard him praying out aloud that they asked him to teach them how to do it. He famously told them to start their prayers by calling on God as Father. Now, thats not an easy concept if youve had a bad experience of fatherhood. But what Jesus was driving at was that, at the heart of creation, there is not just a force but a being capable of love.

When you think about the greatest gifts we have as creatures, it is to love and to be loved. Presumably the one that made us can do what we can do, so its not such a giant leap to believe that the Creator can also love and be loved.

This is what gives our praying such beauty: the thought that the one with whom we are communing might not only hear us but love us and want the best for us.

Thats not always easy to believe, especially in a world that can appear so random and destructive. I heard one writer say that faith is like holding on to a length of string that disappears up into the clouds and every now and again tugs a little.

You might just find that the prayers in these pages get the string tugging a little. If they do, theyll have done their job.

The Right Reverend James Jones was Bishop of Liverpool from 1998 to 2013, and Bishop of Hull from 1994 to 1998. He chaired the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and he speaks, writes and broadcasts on a range of issues, including the environment, ethics in business, regeneration and faith and its impact on the future.

The slate is clean and alls to play for. Ere we go, ere we go, ere we go. A new year stretches out ahead of us and we have no way of knowing quite what its going to contain. Its a time for making resolutions, promising ourselves and our loved ones that well make every effort in this new year of grace to pull our socks up and to get our act together. A lovely idea, though we all know how short-lived these declarations of intent can be.

Methodists begin the New Year with what we call a covenant service. We set out our good intentions in a context where we remember the God who has always kept the promises hes made to us. Our New Year resolutions dont depend on our being strong enough to keep them, but are seen as a response to the unfailing and unfathomable love of our maker. So we make our commitments knowing that God will help us to keep them. I am no longer my own, well say, but Yours. Your will, not mine, be done in all things, wherever You may place me, in all that I do and in all that I may endure; when theres work for me and when theres none; when Im troubled and when Im at peace. Your will be done when Im valued and when Im disregarded; when I find fulfilment and when its lacking; when I have all things, and when I have nothing. I willingly offer all I have and am to serve You as and where you choose.

Dear Lord, on this New Years Day, we ask You to help us keep our promises and to hold fast to us in love, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

This is the week that Christians celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, the visit of the Wise Men to present their gifts to the Christ-child. They are travellers who come from a place that we dont know somewhere in the East to a place that they dont know first to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem, one the birth place and the other the royal seat of David, Israels most celebrated king. But the Wise Men were in search of the future, not the past, seeking the one the carol calls Great Davids greater son.

For many pilgrims today, a place is made holy by its rootedness in the past. They kneel in reverence in a building like my own parish church, where God has been worshipped for centuries. It is, as TS Eliot says, a place where prayer has been valid.

Or it can be the landscape itself that offers that experience Bardsey Island, off the west coast of Wales, is said to be the burial place of 20,000 saints. Its what the Celtic Christians called a thin place, where the divine and natural worlds are so close together that we can catch a glimpse of God beyond the veil that elsewhere hides him from our sight.

The Celts used to say that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places, the distance is much smaller. For the Wise Men in the Gospel story, heaven came so near that they could reach out and touch it. For Christians, God had come to earth in the form of a tiny babe.

Holy God, Your love enfolds us; You are before us and behind; You are the light that shines in our darkness. Hear our prayer that those who seek You may find You, and those who find You may rejoice in that knowledge always; in the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Amen.

It was pitch black. I could make out the beach just and could certainly hear the thundering surf beyond it. We were told we just had to watch and wait. And thats what we did. Being stranded on Ascension Island in June for four days was not part of the plan, but it did mean I got to know this volcanic outcrop, near the equator, miles from everywhere. We watched and waited. Then things began to happen. A shape appeared from the surf and began to struggle up the beach. The noise from above confirmed the arrival, as flocks of skua birds circled in anticipation of a meal.

The arrival was a mother turtle scraping her way up the beach and away from the Atlantic surf to lay her young. The sand was scooped away, the eggs laid, and then the exhausted mother tried to cover them and her tracks as the skuas flew closer and closer. This reptile did what mothers all over the world do: worked tirelessly to protect her young, regardless of the cost to herself.