Nicky Gumbel: ‘If you want to learn resilience, look to Jesus’

The past few years have thrown so many challenges at us, says Nicky Gumbel. Jesus’ vision, love for others, relationships and model of empowerment show us how we can bend and not break. Here’s his sermon from the National Prayer Breakfast for Scotland in full

Resilience, from the Latin word resilire, means to rebound, recoil or spring back; not just to absorb pressure and be overwhelmed by it, but to absorb pressure and be able to spring back - to use pressure to your advantage. It’s like the difference between an oak tree and a palm tree. An oak tree looks strong, but has relatively shallow roots and is rigid. It can’t really flex, so if the wind is strong enough, it will break or blow over.

A palm tree doesn’t look that strong, but when it’s blown by the wind, it can bend parallel to the ground. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s what we need when the wind blows. The palm tree can return to its place without breaking or blowing over. So resilience is not so much about how strong you look, but how much you can flex.