Walking

Spiritual reflection to start the day with Bryan Kerr, a Church of Scotland Minister in Kilmacolm, Inverclyde.
Script:
Good morning. I remember a friend of mine who climbed Munroes said that you don't really know a hill until you've climbed it slowly. You can drive past it; you can photograph it; you can read about it in a guidebook; but the hill only gives itself up to the person who's put one foot in front of the other long enough to feel it.

I think most of the things worth knowing are like that. Friendships. Marriages. Work that matters. Faith, when it's any good. None of them arrive by post. They arrive by walking.

This week I've been talking about some of the small habits that, over time, shape the kind of person we become. Noticing what we name. Knowing the people and the things that matter to us. Serving the neighbour we'd rather avoid. Trusting, when the path goes dark. Showing, by how we live, what we say we believe. None of it is dramatic, or even delivers quick results. It's just one foot in front of the other.

For Christians, this is what following Jesus actually looks like. It’s not a single decision or a finished argument. It’s a walk, with company, in roughly the right direction. There are days you can see the path clearly and there are days that you can't … but you keep walking anyway.

You don't have to share my faith to recognise the principle. Most of what makes a human life worth anything is built quietly, by small repeated choices, over the years that nobody films. The weekend ahead is part of it. So is Monday … and Tuesday. So is the next conversation you have with someone you love, or someone you struggle to.

God of the road and of the rest at the end of it, give us today the patience for the walking, and the wisdom to know we are not walking alone. Amen.