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A reflection and prayer to start the day with George Craig, a Methodist local preacher in Cardiff.

Good morning. When he was very young, my eldest grandson was taken to the theatre. It was to see a performance of Annie.

He was very quiet until the interval, when he turned to his mother and announced 鈥淭hose people are all pretending. But the dog is real鈥�.

My initial response was to mentally file that under 鈥榗ute things kids say鈥�.

But it wouldn鈥檛 go away. And the more I thought about it the more it seemed to me to be quite a challenging thought.

To put it simply, I found myself 鈥� and still do 鈥� wondering just how 鈥榬eal鈥� I am.

But being real comes at what we regard as a cost.

In an age when our privacy seems increasingly threatened many of us worry about how vulnerable and open to exploitation that makes us. But sometimes we just worry that if people were ever to see the real us, they would somehow think less of us than of the people we try to be and that we think others want us to be. It鈥檚 hard work.

But it may explain why some people find faith hard 鈥� a relationship with a God who actually knows us better than we know ourselves can be a bit worrying. That we鈥檒l also find in that relationship a level of acceptance that goes beyond anything we could ever imagine somehow gets lost in the overall anxiety.

But the core of that relationship is that with God there is no need to pretend. We鈥檙e accepted as we are and we鈥檒l be most fully ourselves as we strive to love one another with that same openness.

And the more open we are the more others will be willing to take the risk of being open with us. And that surely is worth a risk or two.

Father God, may we be inspired by your love and acceptance of us to risk showing more love and acceptance of ourselves and of one another. Amen.

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