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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Jonathan Romain

Good morning

For some reason there鈥檚 a song that kept going through my head this week that we used to sing at youth camps, the one that went (I won鈥檛 try and sing it this early in the morning), 鈥渙h you never get to heaven..in my old car, 鈥榗os my old car....won鈥檛 get that far鈥�

Maybe I thought of it as it鈥檚 one of the questions I get asked most 鈥� how do you get to heaven? And there are various Jewish legends, though I stress, they are only legends, like the one about a rabbi standing in the market place, and an angel appearing to him to say that two people there had already earned their place in heaven. The rabbi asks who, and the angel points out two men, so the rabbi rushes over to find out what is so special about them and asks what they do: are they saints or scholars?

鈥淣o鈥�, they reply, 鈥渨e are merry-makers: when we see a person who is sad, we cheer them up and when we see two people quarrelling, we make peace between them鈥�.

Just a story, but with a strong message about how to act in this life, and make it more like heaven for others, like another legend about when you get to heaven and request to be let in, you will not be asked how many prayers did you say each day, but you will be asked, were you honest in your business dealings because it is just as much how we behave at work, Monday to Friday between 9 am and 5.30 pm, that indicates whether we are religious or not.

But my favourite is that you when you knock on the gates, you won鈥檛 be asked, were you another Albert Einstein or Nelson Mandela, but instead they will say, were you yourself, did you do what no one else but you could have done in the situations you were in, were you the best possible version of you that you could be? We鈥檒l never be any good at being other people, but we can be a first class us.

So I ask God鈥檚 help to be, if not merry-makers, then to use our talent for good as much as we can, whatever it may be, and to fulfil our own unique potential.

Amen

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