Morning worship: reader Rosie Medhurst. This service is the fifth in our Young People in the Bible series: 'You're not too young'.

First reading: Jeremiah 1, 4-8
Second reading: 1 Timothy 1, 1.1–2; 4.12–16

Our focus today is on two figures who were called to demanding leadership roles while still very young. While the prophet Jeremiah is normally thought of as an older man, his initial response to God is “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” In Timothy's case, the older apostle Paul anticipates his possible doubts: "Let no-one despise your youth". Both Jeremiah and Timothy receive instructions which are both reassuring and challenging. Others must not dismiss them on account of their lack of experience; they themselves, however, are not allowed to make their youth an excuse for inaction!

Images of Jeremiah generally show him as a tough, experienced older man, courageously speaking truth to power and telling people who did not want to listen about uncomfortable realities. For this very reason, it is good to be reminded that his first response, on realising what he was being called to do, was one of near panic. Timothy, in contrast, is typically depicted as beardless, as a way of emphasising his youth. The image on this page is a detail from a 12th century stained glass window, in which the staff in the saint's right hand simultaneously represents the cudgel with which he was martyred, an emblem of his own authority and, through the feathery texture of its surface, the martyr's palm of victory.