St Polycarp | Wednesday 23 February 2022

Today is Wednesday the 23rd of February, the feast of St Polycarp, in the seventh week of Ordinary time.

Sarah Gregory with Bifrost Arts sings, 'Psalm 90': "In every age O Lord, you have been our refuge". What do these words mean to you today?

Today's reading is from the Letter of James.
James 4: 13-17
Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.' Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.

'What is your life?' A big question to hear in today's scripture passage…Spend some time now with this question… What is your life?
We are reminded that, although we can make plans for business, money or travel, we do not know what tomorrow will bring. We have all experienced this over the last couple of years through the shock of being faced with a pandemic; plans cancelled, events cancelled; the loss of health, of life, even. How do you understand this scripture after your own experience?

As you listen again, notice what stirs in you when you hear life described as 'mist'…
'If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that'… Can you surrender to this verse today, difficult as it may be?


Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.