Hello friends,
This is Mark Ludman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in docks.
Welcome back as we continue our series Stay.
Here.
Now,
Some mornings arrive.
.
.
.
And we've got a completely clean slate.
And quite often,
The opposite's true.
You wake up carrying yesterday with you,
Right?
The conversation,
The disappointment,
The mistake,
The things you wish you could undo.
Maybe even something much older than yesterday.
Might be months old,
Years old even.
Sometimes beginning again sounds like a wonderful idea until you realise that you don't know how.
There's a line in the book of Lamentations,
His mercies are new every morning.
It's a beautiful line,
But I think we miss something if we make it too cheerful,
Right?
Because Lamentations isn't a book written from an easy place.
It comes out of grief and loss and destruction.
A world that hasn't turned out as it was supposed to.
And right there in the middle of all of that sorrow,
Becomes his strange act of remembering.
He's talking about God.
God's mercies are new every year.
Morning.
Now the promise here doesn't sit around the fact that everything's been fixed or that you imagine what happened yesterday.
It comes out of the idea that yesterday doesn't get to decide whether mercy is possible and available to you today.
Sometimes I think we imagine that beginning again It means we have to become a completely different person.
To get it right,
To leave the past behind,
To start fresh.
But I think maybe the steps to beginning again are a lot smaller than that.
Maybe it's just waking up and receiving today as a gift.
You don't have to be.
A new person this morning.
You can be exactly the person who went to sleep last night with your unfinished business and your questions and your regrets and your hopes and your tiredness and still there's mercy new every morning.
Not earned.
Not achieved.
Not found,
Just there,
Waiting for you.
So today I invite you to take a breath and let yesterday be yesterday.
You don't have to deny it or forget it or pretend it didn't happen,
But just don't make yesterday carry the possibilities of today.
There's another morning,
Another breath,
Another opportunity to notice,
To love,
To choose differently.
And to begin.
And so maybe there's something you need to begin again today.
Relationship or a practice or a conversation or a hope or maybe you need to begin again with yourself.
And stop being so hard on the person that you are.
And so in today's silence,
You might say something like,
Yesterday is finished.
This die is here.
And mercy is true.
Yesterday is finished.
This day is here.
Mercy is to.
You don't have to know what the whole day is going to bring.
Or what's going to make it a perfect day.
Just receive the day,
This day,
One morning,
One breath.
One beginning.
Let's sit with that just for a couple of minutes.
Yesterday is finished.
This day is here.
Mercy is here too.
God's mercies are new every morning.
You you God's mercies are new every morning,
Maybe beginning again.
Every morning.
God's already offering you the possibility.
So however you begin,
Begin gently,
Begin honestly.
And begin exactly where you are.
And may grace,
Peace,
And love be with you and remain with you as you begin.
In those new mercies today.
And always.
The mercies are new and they're here for you.
All you have to do is stay.
Here.
Grace and peace,
My friend.
