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Gifts and Call

I was dozing quietly over my lectio divina or "prayerful reading" earlier this morning when a phrase from Romans leaped out of the page with a freshness and urgency I had not experienced before. "The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable." It set me thinking about failure (yes, I know I'm perverse). We're all flawed and fallible beings, and each of us has a personal history of failure. Most of us are obscure enough to escape the searchlight of history and can keep our shortcomings to ourselves. That doesn't make them any easier to live with, and I daresay most of us have discovered we are pelagians at heart, believing we can overcome our faults by our own efforts. When we find that we can't, we either dismiss our weaknesses as endearing little foibles (i.e we lie to ourselves), brazen things out ("O evil, be thou my good"), or abandon hope. I suspect that despair is the most dangerous. It is no accident that St Benedict ends his list of "Tools of Good Works" with "Never despair of God's mercy." That has been my lifeline on more than one occasion, because it ties in with what St Paul is saying in Romans. God never gives up. He never despairs (and heaven knows, we give Him enough reason to do so). There is something humbling about a God who is prepared to wait for His children to turn to Him. Irresistibly attractive, in fact.

Advance notice: in November we shall be making the first of a series of changes to our web site. The weekly prayer podcast (didn't happen last Sunday because of "the bug") will be moving from Colophon to another page as we have a new feature we want to introduce. Just to tease your interest, think "live", think "interactive" . . . And thank you for all the feedback you send. Although we do test everything, we can't always know how things will look on your screen/operating system so we rely on you to let us know.

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