Every year, my ministerial alma mater invites me to attend their valedictory event - usually a Saturday, with a barbecue and a service - and every year I can't get there, either the logistics are too complicated or local commitments rightly take priority.  This year lockdown means it is taking place online, so I can take part, and that is a real joy, an unexpected blessing.

One tradition of the college, at least in my day, was to give you a book token and a book plate so that you could choose your own gift - they reckoned we had enough Bibles, and would almost certainly be presented with one at ordination, so it was over to us.  As it happened, I chose a Bible, now seventeen years old and very battered.  I am glad I made that choice, because the Bible has been with me in some of my saddest and darkest times as well as gladdest and brightest. 

I don't always use it, there are newer translations and paraphrases, but it is always on my desk, never the bookcase, and goes with me to courses, conferences, care homes, hospitals and holidays.  And every time I open it, I am reminded not of a date (unusually this one has never fixed in my brain) but of a community of people who I love, and who love me.

Today a new cohort of NBC-formed ministers will be unleashed on an unsuspecting Baptist world - I pray they may know the joy of God, the inspiration of Sophia Spirit-Wisdom and the accompaniment of Brother-Christ in all they do.

(PS: Seventeen years? How did that happen?!)