Today, up and down the country, families will have been celebrating Mothering Sunday.
Some mothers will have received an early breakfast, cards and perhaps some flowers. Later in the day restaurants are booked out as families celebrate the place of mothers and the love they have shared. Flowers will also be laid at graves as we remember with thanksgiving mothers who have died, and whose memory continues to inspire and provide hope.
Mother's Day is a day of thanksgiving, celebration and reflection.
In churches thousands of daffodils will have be given out to those join in prayer and worship as we celebrate what it means to be called together into the family of the Church and to share a common identity and community.
This last week there have been some who have sought to break apart community life and fill hearts and minds with thoughts of fear and terror. They have sought through acts of brutality to destroy the light of hope and the love which sits at the very heart of both community and family life. One of the hopeful consequences of the terror attack in London was to hear how people immediately made contact with their families and sought to form and grow community in the face of danger, fear and uncertainty.
Perhaps this Mothering Sunday we can, as we celebrate the love and hope in our own experience of mothering, reflect together on what makes and nurtures community life. What provides hope in the face of fear and uncertainty and what it is that we share with one another, namely the peace of Christ.
Canon Christopher Burke
Vice Dean and Canon Precentor