Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Iain McFadzean, chief executive of Work Place Chaplaincy Scotland.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for the opportunity to address you today.
I come from a long line of human beings, as almost all the members of my family—with a few temporary teenage exceptions—have been human beings. Day by day, all our actions make us more or less human. Being human is about valuing one another, serving one another and accepting one another. That allows us all to be, to continue to exist, to grow and to thrive as a race—human beings.
Day by day, Work Place Chaplaincy Scotland seeks to offer pastoral and spiritual support to all humans—people of any faith or none—and the occasional dog, in workplaces across Scotland. We have the privilege of sharing in some of the best and some of the worst moments in people’s lives. We do not share words of religion, but we share words of compassion and empathy and seek, by our words and actions, to model an environment that values all people, especially when circumstances cause them to question their own value.
Jesus’s story of the prodigal son is remembered as a story of forgiveness. A father forgives an errant son for taking his inheritance and squandering it on wild and selfish living. In that respect, it draws for us a picture of a forgiving God waiting for us to come home, to forget the past and to start life again. However, it also tells us so much about what it is to be human—how we can often want more than is good for us, putting ourselves first without thinking of the hurt inflicted on others and refusing to forgive because there is nothing in it for us. It could be a very depressing story, but it is not, because it ends with a party full of hope for the future where a son learns that he is still valued—valued for who he is and not for what he has or has not done.
Jesus lived as a human being to bring hope to earth. Regardless of whether or not we believe in the loving God of our story, he still believes in us—we are valued.
Today, each one of us, in our lives and in our business, will make choices big and small; choices about being; choices that reveal or reduce our humanity and add or remove value to us and to other humans; choices that bring or remove hope in being.
May God bless you all in the challenge of human being!
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