Here is today’s Gospel reading, from St Matthew: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it’.

The Welsh poet R S Thomas described this well in his poem, ‘The Bright Field: ‘I have seen / the sun break through  / to illuminate a small field / for a while, and gone my way / and forgotten it. But that was the / pearl of great price, the one field that had / treasure in it. I realise now / that I must give all that I have / to possess it. Life is not hurrying // on to a receding future,  / nor hankering after / an imagined past. It is the turning / aside like Moses to the miracle / of the lit bush, to a brightness / that seemed as transitory as your youth / once, but is the eternity that awaits you’.

Let us take time to discover, and look after, our own ‘bright fields’, and may God bless you this day.