The gifts of life

When I was a little girl we often sang in church ’Give us grace to persevere’. I used to wonder who was the mysterious ’Grace’ and the man ’Percy Vere’ and why we had to give Grace to Percy? At that age I had sense enough not to ask.

Now, today, the phrase ’Give us Grace to Persevere’ fascinates me. Those of a mystical bent might say that ’Grace’ is a gift of God. But if that is so, why would we have to ask that this should be given us? Surely ’grace’ would be innate?

Those of us with a more mundane nature would ask of Life to give us enough energy or ’get up and go’ , to keep trying. . . ’Persevere’ in the OUP dictionary yeilds ’continue steadfastly, persist’, which may remind us of the Scottish King Bruce who learnt perseverance from watching a spider begin spinning and hanging its web.

Is perseverance important to you? It is to me. I need, in physical ’old-age’, to keep knowing ’what is, is’ and not fall victim to self-pity at the loss of independence and many other things. I needed perseverance to turn my mind to positive questioning: What have I got still to give, and then wrote a children’s story. Perseverance pays off. I’m now on my second book. Rain or shine, what a gift life can be!