Thought for the Week

The date is calculated through combining various factors including the weather, the level of our debt and our ability to take positive action. I’m not convinced that one day is more depressing than any other but there is no doubt that many of us feel low in spirits in January. How can we find the strength to cope with such times whenever they come?

It makes all the difference when we trust in God and his care for us. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven, give us each day our daily bread.” They lived in a subsistence society in which people were dependent on the crops which they grew on their land. They needed to find their food each day.

Every day the men would go out hunting or fishing and return with something for the family to eat. The women would bake bread and cook the meal. As the family ate their food they gave thanks to God for supplying their needs for another day.

It is good to bring all our worries and anxieties to God. Jesus told the people they could learn valuable lessons from the birds and the flowers. He said, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour and spin. Yet I tell you not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.”

So when we feel low in spirits it is good to pray to God and to ask him to help us by providing all our needs. We can ask him to help us not to worry about tomorrow but to do what we have to do today. As each day comes to an end we can thank him for bringing us safely through the day. I still pray a prayer I learned in infant school, “Lord keep us safe this night, secure from all our fears, may angels guard us while we sleep till morning light appears.”