Sea Sunday is the day each year when churches worldwide come together to pray for seafarers, and to support Mission to Seafarers’ ministry to them.

For Sea Sunday 2026, the theme is ‘Harbours of Hope: The Church Alongside Seafarers’, inspired by Matthew 25. This theme celebrates the local church as a place of welcome, refuge, and hope — a community offering both spiritual and practical safety to those who work at sea. It invites congregations to reflect on how they can stand alongside seafarers through prayer, hospitality, generosity, and justice. https://www.missiontoseafarers.org

The Bible contains many links between seeds and spiritual growth. The parable of the sower is the most famous. A person may hear or experience something of God which has the potential to germinate into a life of following Him, resulting in the fruit of others coming to know God too. But things can happen that snatch that seed away, killing it before it has finished germinating, or choking its growth.

What about the knowledge of God that gets trampled, churned too deep in the mire of life to develop into faith? Buried seeds don’t always die. They can lie dormant, inactive until the earth is turned over. The chance of that moment of connecting with something divine may seem infinitesimally small, but it’s not zero. The seed may be incredibly tough, just waiting for a chance to grow.

It took a long time for the disciples to understand the full implications of Jesus’ teaching: it took many of them three years or more. They could have been discouraged, but Jesus was not.

New every morning is the love our waking and uprising prove: through sleep and darkness safely brought, restored to life and pow’r and thought.

New mercies, each returning day, hover around us while we pray: new perils past, new sins forgiv’n,new thoughts of God, new hopes of heav’n.

If on our daily course our mind be set to hallow all we find, new treasures still, of countless price, God will provide for sacrifice.

The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all we ought to ask: room to deny ourselves - a road to bring us daily nearer God.

Only, O Lord, in thy dear love fit us for perfect rest above; and help us, this and ev’ry day, to live more nearly as we pray.

John Keble (1792-1866)

pollybrown@mottramparish.org.uk

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