Thought for the Day - Saturday 24 October

Message from Rev Caryl Kyle Minister: Holytown l/w Wrangholm Parish Churches Thought for the Day – Saturday 24th October ‘A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.’ (Proverbs 17: 22) It is indeed changed days isn’t it? When my two sons were little we would sit down together in the afternoon and I would bring out all my nursery rhyme books from the bookshelf and they would look at the pictures and decide which one we would all sing together – for one son it was usually ‘Humpty Dumpty’ first which was his favourite and for the other the first one was always ‘Wind the Bobbin up’ and then a whole host of them after that! Now with my youngest grandchild, although all the nursery rhyme books are still there in the bookcase, Alexa gets turned on and she is asked to play nursery rhymes and they come on randomly and we sit and sing them all together! However, the other day when her random selection came on and we were singing them together it struck me - as it never has before – even after all the years of teaching primary school infants – just how violent or miserable they all are! We had Humpty Dumpty breaking and not being able to be fixed again, we had Miss Polly the dolly who was sick, sick, sick, we had all the children falling down and sneezing away in Ring O’ Roses, we had monkeys falling off the bed and bumping their heads and so it went on and on! I have to say I do remember studying the origins of all these nursery rhymes during my training as a teacher but not until this week did it actually strike me just how gruesome some of them were – maybe it was the fact that one came on straight after the other!! Although I have to say young children do often love the gruesome! Anyway, reflecting on all of this later did make me smile and brought to mind this verse from Proverbs where we are told to have a cheerful heart because it can be as good as medicine for our souls. Well, they say, smiling certainly does produce anti-stress hormones – so maybe we all need to try smiling more, even if it is just at the absurd nature of some of our nursery rhymes!! Sharing a smile does work wonders though and not just for your stress levels but for the stress levels of others too who are usually delighted that someone has actually smiled at them! So go on smile and feed your soul and feel so much better! Prayer Loving Lord, So often in life it is the simplest of things which can bring us a feeling of calm and a feeling of calm to others. Thank you Lord for the simple things of life and help us to take time to share those simple things with others that our souls may be fed and the souls of others uplifted. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.