URC Daily Devotion 26 August 2025
Marged
Was she planned?
Or is this one of life’s
throw-offs? Small, taken from school
young: put to minister
to a widowed mother, who keeps
her simple, she feeds the hens,
speaks their language, is one
of them, quick, easily
frightened, with sharp
eyes, ears. When I have
been there, she keeps her perch
on my mind. I would
stroke her feathers, quieten
her, say: ‘Life is
like this.’ But have I
the right, who have seen plainer
women with love
in abundance, with
freedom, with money to
hand? If there is one thing
she has, it is a bird’s
nature, volatile
as a bird. But even
as those among whom she
lives and moves, who look at her
with their expectant
glances, song is denied her.
From Collected Poems 1945-1990 (Phoenix Giant, 1993)
R S Thomas © Elodie Thomas
John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Reflection
What does it mean to have life and to have it abundantly? This aspiration is often quoted in church and elsewhere, but there is little agreement about what it really means. Is it about having love, freedom and money, about being ‘your true self’, ‘living your best life’? Where do we see those who have life in abundance? And how would we assess our own lives on a scale of fulness?
In his poem Marged, R.S. Thomas describes a woman who lives a life that does not seem abundant at all. She is ‘put to minister’ to her widowed mother, keeping hens, doing household chores, and her mother ‘keeps her simple’. Thomas (pastoral visiting?), assures her that life is just like this. But he doubts his own words and sees her as a bird denied its song.
It is profoundly sad and disturbing when we meet people whom we judge to have a limited, rather than abundant, life. And it can be soul destroying when we reflect on our own lives, to imagine what we might have been.
But perhaps it is part of every human life that we don’t ever (and could not) fulfil all our potential. There is unrealised longing in everyone. Today we talk so much about fulfilling our lives, whereas Jesus talked about losing them as the way to do just that. Thomas is convinced that Marged was ‘put to minister’ and ‘denied her song’, and if so that is her tragedy and her mother’s sin. But it is possible to choose a life of service, and to find fulness there. And it is even possible, when a life has been thrust upon you, to live abundantly. It is a paradox, that we often see in those with a life limited in some way what does really look like fulness of life. It may be possible, every day, to fill the cup of life, whatever our circumstances. It is a gift.
Prayer
O God,
by whom I know myself beloved,
planned and begotten,
thank you for the gift of my life.
I know that I am limited,
by time and circumstances,
by my body and my will,
that I cannot fulfil all my dreams
or all your hopes for me.
So, I pray that you will teach me
how to live well in each moment,
that I may lose myself for others,
and give abundantly of love.
Amen.