The sun is streaming through the window this morning. As I travel the track from Chichester to London I’ve watched the strong, bright, autumn sun burn the mist from the fields and light the faces of my fellow commuters. Charlotte isn’t with me today, she’s home in bed not feeling her best (get well lovely – miss you) so I travel alone. I am not good in the mornings. Generally I am slow, clumsy and quite dim until about 10am. My morning train journey is a pleasure. Though it means I do have to leave my warm bed earlier than I’d prefer, it also gives me an hour and a half to open my mind and move up the gears. This morning as I got on I plugged in my iPhone and listened to the Jesuit Pray As You Go Podcast. The music this morning was absolutely beautiful… Dolce Jesus Mio… Sweet Jesus, have mercy on me… It started me thinking, as I listened to the reading from Luke I thought the most grateful people in the gospels are the people who know what Jesus saved them from.
I used to practice daily
confession, daily examination of my actions, regularly saying sorry to God and
starting afresh. “Search me Oh
Lord…” and the following lines in Psalm 139 were some of the first verses of
the Bible I learnt by heart. I
stopped this practice when my prayers took a bitter turn and rather than my
confession ending in gratitude I would get caught by my own shame. I haven’t stopped saying sorry. I just stopped making a specific time
for it. As I listened to the song
and reading on my podcast though I started to think that maybe I’ve turned a
corner and it’s time to return to that practice. Not because I want to feel bad, but because I want to know
how good Jesus is. I read something
recently that’s feeding this thought – my memory is so poor I can’t remember
which of the four books I’ve been reading it came from. No matter, the essence of it was…
without judgement we cannot be shown mercy… we don’t know we need rescue if we
don’t recognise we’re in trouble…
Examination and confession breeds many things in me: gratitude, love,
humility and maybe most importantly grace for other people’s mistakes. Change is bursting forth in the
colourful landscape outside my window; I hope my change is as beautiful… xc