Prayers of Life: Roundabout

 

From the other side of the safety railings here in Hertford you can see the roundabouts on the A414. I don’t look very much, Lord, but even in a short time I can see the remarkable complexity of the system. People are interacting on their varying journeys. Their meeting in this place set out for mingling shows a mixture of cooperation and trust as well as some carelessness and bullying. Just like daily life without vehicles, I suppose.

It is a marvel that there aren’t more crashes, as people speed along, using the wrong lane, ignoring the red light which “only just changed”, maybe distracted by passengers or phones, or – please, no – in a fit of road rage. We can all be afflicted by selfishness, whether or not we are in a vehicle, and who is to say that the long daily queues don’t wear people down. Yet for all that, most drivers come through safely and reach their destination. And when the world’s news is presented in newspapers, or on TV or radio, it is usually the problems that are focused on. Perhaps it helps us to avoid them ourselves…

Viewing a roundabout on a good day I can see many people taking suitable care, avoiding excessive risks, even being courteous to others – maybe even to me if I am on the road. It’s a great picture of how things are in most of life, in which we rejoice, but we must always be alert to things that we may have failed to notice and the signs showing the way ahead. No wonder God gives us time to praise and time to confess.

Lord, help me to follow the way to which your love calls me. It is easy to take a wrong turn if I allow selfish impulses to take over. Open my eyes that I may not miss the signs showing the way. Direct my way day by day away from evil and toward good, and through faith in you grant that my life, over the years, may not be going round in circles, but lived so that I come to that heavenly destination of life with you; through Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Prayers of Life revisited….

Some while ago, Michel Quoist, a Catholic priest, published a book called Prayers of Life. It became extremely popular, as it took situations from everyday life, contemplated them and prayed about them. It encouraged a closeness or familiarity with God -  present in everyday events and observations - which made a profound contrast with the churches’ forms of worship at the time which were almost entirely the Book of Common Prayer and the Latin Mass, neither of which was particularly contemporary.