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Prayer for the Day

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Prayer for the Day: 25/07/2019

25/07/2019

BBC Radio 4 - Prayer for the Day, 25/07/2019

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day, with Canon Angela Tilby.

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Canon Angela Tilby

Good morning. 

I can’t get out of my mind at the moment those school leavers who are waiting for important exam results. GCSE’s will be announced four  weeks today, and A levels three weeks today. It’s many years since I took an exam but its only comparatively recently that my dreams caught up with me - for years I used to have exam anxiety dreams. You know the sort of thing. You can’t find the room where the exam is being held, or you get there, turn over the paper and find you have revised the wrong book, or you are sitting an exam in a language you don’t know. I would sometimes wake up gasping with terror. 

In reality, though I was always nervous before exams I was one of those people who tended to rise to the challenge and stuffed myself with facts effectively enough to get through. That doesn’t mean I always reached real understanding. I have cheerfully forgotten everything I once knew about, for example, the unification of Italy, or William Henry Hudson’s (to me) rather dreary novel Far Away and Long Ago. 

Testing of one kind or another is part of life and we face it all the time, in our work and relationships, in our inner attitudes, in our ability to persevere in difficulty and bounce back in defeat. Every test we face is an experiment: we try ourselves against reality. It’s nice to pass of course, it’s nice to win, but the real point is the way testing shows us the truth about ourselves, and encourages us to tread boldly into the next phase of life. 

So, today, good Lord, in trial and temptation keep us faithful; in success keep is humble, in defeat, give us the faith to try again.

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