Plenary,

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Official Report 392KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

To lead our time for reflection this afternoon, we welcome Mrs Louise Purvis, who is a member of the executive committee of the National Prayer Breakfast for Scotland.

I adopted your land 42 years ago as a student at the University of St Andrews. I felt that I had come home, perhaps because my forebears set out from Fife centuries earlier. They adopted my land, the Shenandoah valley of Virginia. They felt that they had come home. Those Scots filled that valley with their values and priorities—faith, family and fellowship. Their input changed our history.

I returned to Scotland a decade later as a wife and mother. I was startled to see that those values of faith, family and fellowship were in decline.

I saw the worst consequences of that decline in the Scottish prisons. A group of us set up a lay ministry, Prison Fellowship Scotland, to help the prison chaplains to try to reverse the decline.

Just as I started going into prisons, my husband went into politics. I then feared for our faith, family and fellowship!

My fears were groundless. My husband, John, a Scottish Tory Presbyterian, along with a Welsh Methodist socialist and an Italian Catholic Christian Democrat, started a fellowship in the European Parliament. It is still going strong. Their fellowship gathering is an oasis of peace, unity and trust. There they are reminded how great is their God, and how, in the words of the prophet Isaiah,

"unto us a child is born … and the government will be upon His shoulders".

What a relief for politicians! There they recall that they are accountable, not only to their electorate but to God, their families, and one another.

When they meet, they study the life and teachings of the man whom many consider the greatest role model for leaders the world has ever known—Jesus Christ, a servant leader who, with a group of 12 men in fellowship, changed the world.

The European Parliament Fellowship later led to the birth of the National Prayer Breakfast for Scotland. It was founded by members of every political party for the leaders of Scotland. Some of you attended this event earlier today.

It also led to a European Prayer Breakfast. Last year, in the presence of several hundred politicians from 20 European countries, the President of Macedonia spoke movingly. He said:

"I have never read a book on politics and never intend to. The bottom line in my daily decision-making is, what would Jesus do?"

I pray that in the busy-ness of serving your constituents, you will keep foremost the real business of leadership—promoting the values and priorities that made your land and mine great: faith, family and fellowship.

As members will know, it is the happy custom in the Parliament to welcome distinguished visitors who are in our midst. Today, there are three welcomes to be made. First, we welcome Mr Jaak Gabriels, the Minister for Economic Affairs and Foreign Trade in the Government of Flanders. He is here to mark the launch of the new direct ferry service between Scotland and the continent. [Applause.] Secondly, we welcome Señor Gabriel Elorriaga, the Secretary of State for Territorial Organisation in the Spanish Government. He is full of excitement, not only about what is happening here, but about something that I believe is happening at Hampden later. [Applause.] Thirdly, we welcome the members of the committee for agriculture and fishery from the Basque Parliament. [Applause.]