Good afternoon. Our first item of business is time for reflection, and our leader today is the Rev Graham Daniels, the general director of Christians in Sport.
Presiding Officer and members of the Scottish Parliament, thank you for the opportunity to address you this afternoon.
For a Welshman living in exile in Cambridge, addressing the Scottish Parliament is a moment in life that I am unlikely to forget. I hope to add it to a catalogue of fond memories, which includes an entry in the Guinness book of records for the 1983-84 football season, when my football team, Cambridge United, achieved the record for all football at the time—in English league football at least—of playing 31 games in a row in the second division between October 1983 and March 1984, drawing four and losing 27. I played in them all. It really hurt at the time but—here is the thing—I have laughed about it so many times since then with pals who were in the team of shame.
That is why I love sport. It tests your character while building community. It makes life so much richer.
Maybe today will prove as long standing a memory as the annual prize day in the upper sixth, when the headteacher sent me from the stage because I refused to stand for prayers. As a young man, I was a convinced atheist. I was so proud to be a martyr to the cause and went home pretty proud, apart from a very sharp retribution from my mother.
However, I bumped into a boy from school the next day and he challenged me and said, “You’re all show, Daniels, but have you ever actually read one of the Christian gospels?” I had to confess that I had not, and it took seven or eight years of thinking about these things to come to the conclusion that God had revealed himself to his world through Jesus Christ. As a young adult, I became convinced that the Christian faith was not just a matter of taste but a matter of truth. That is why I love the Christian gospel. It can surprise you. It can turn your life around.
It is my honour this afternoon to open the meeting by addressing you as a Christian in sport. I spent the morning in Glasgow, preparing with the churches there for the Commonwealth games. Many people in this great country have a Christian faith. Many people in this great country have a huge passion for sport. A significant number of people in this great country combine a passion for sport with a love for Jesus Christ. May Scotland continue to be a country that cherishes and nurtures both those things as it looks to its future.
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