Thought for the Day 1

Tomorrow I scale the dizzy heights of Radio Bristol's training day for their Thought for the Day slot. It sounded like a fun way to spend the morning, at least it would be different. But then I had to do homework - two thoughts, one of which has to be for tomorrow. Here's the first one. Second one coming when I've written it (hopefully by tomorrow).

At church in our Sunday morning service this week all the people there sang the wrong words to a hymn. It wasn’t intentional, but the sheet on which it was written was wrong. It wasn’t a big mistake, just one letter missing but it changed the whole meaning of the hymn.

The missing letter was the ‘n’ from the beginning of ‘never’, and it changed a prayer for the ‘never employed’ to a prayer for the ‘ever employed’.

But since Sunday, I’ve been thinking about this missing letter and I think that, although it was a mistake, there is something very important about praying for the ‘ever employed’.

I don’t want to say that it is not important to pray for those who don’t have work when they would like it. To be unemployed can mean to be excluded from society and to struggle to provide essentials like food and clothes. Being unemployed can be awful.

But to be ‘ever employed’, always on the go, can be awful in different ways. Busy parents don’t get to see their children as much as they (or their children) would like. Husbands or wives who are too busy to spend time together can often end up going through the pain of divorce. And the health of those who are too busy suffers as well. So the ‘ever employed’ need to be cared for and prayed for as well.

The Bible says that when God created the world, he rested from his work on the seventh day and he made the seventh day holy, a day when all people could take a break and be refreshed. In that rest and refreshment, people are able to find that God blesses them.

In a busy city like Bristol, and a country which works the longest hours in Europe, we need to find this blessing, we need to find rest and refreshment.

‘Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens’, said Jesus, ‘and I will give you rest.’


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