Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Anne Robertson, who is the minister of Danestone Congregational church in Aberdeen.
Thank you for inviting me to lead time for reflection, Presiding Officer.
A week past Sunday was Easter Sunday, which is a very important celebration for Christians around the world, when we celebrated Jesus’s resurrection.
For my congregation, Easter Sunday tends to present them with something a little unexpected. Over the past few years, I have rearranged the seating so that everyone faced a side wall; I have had the congregation sit in a huge circle so that everyone was facing one another; I have crushed a Creme Egg in front of them; and I have bounced an egg off the communion table.
I do such things to be unpredictable. After all, nothing was as the disciples and the women expected it to be on that first Easter morning. They went to Jesus’s grave expecting to find his body inside, with the stone rolled in front of the entrance, but that is not what they found. Understandably, they were very confused. After all, the unexpected and the unimaginable had happened—Jesus had risen from the grave.
Although on Easter Sunday I try to make things different or to do the unexpected in my church, I can never fully recreate the feelings that Jesus’s followers must have had when they discovered the empty tomb, but what I can do is let my congregation experience the unexpected in a small way. As we go through life, it is rare for things to always pan out the way that we expect them to. At some point, we all face the unexpected, because life is not predictable. We should never assume that things will always go our way.
That lesson of not assuming things applies to us all as we live our lives. We should never assume to know what people are thinking or how they are feeling. We should treat everyone with respect. When Jesus said,
“Love your neighbour as yourself”,
he meant that we should treat people the way that we want to be treated. Of course, that includes listening to what they are actually saying and not assuming that we know best.
I am sure that, as MSPs, you are all aware of the importance of stopping to listen and actually hear what is being said. However, my prayer is that, as well as listening to your constituents, you will listen to God, because that way, whether the expected or the unexpected happens, you will be ready to respond in his strength and to continue serving the people of Scotland.
Thank you.