I Can

Today is National Tin Can Day in the USA, they make quite a big thing of it. TV cookery shows have 'make today's meals with cans from your cupboard' and enterprising groups organise "Can Challenges" to collect stocks for their charity foodbanks [that's a good way to celebrate]
They chose this day because on Jan 19th 1825 - 200 years ago, Thomas Kensett and Ezra Daggett filed the first patent in the USA to make tin cans for food preservation. In the UK, Peter Durand had filed a patent some fifteen years before, and in 1812, the brilliant inventor Bryan Donkin set up a canning factory in Bermondsey - but somehow we do not celebrate them here in the UK. Perhaps we should.

Today I am thinking of can as a noun, rather as a verb. To be able to do something-  from the Old English cunnan ‘to know’ (in Middle English ‘know how to’) Bob and Rosie both have famous namesakes who use can as their catchphrase - the Builder and the Riveter.
It is so easy to feel daunted, or defeated, when there is a difficult task ahead of us. 

When I am struggling to deal with something I which feel is beyond my abilities, I don't turn to these two fictional characters but rather to the Bible. In Philippians the apostle Paul says "I can do all this through Jesus, who gives me strength" and the book of Joshua where we read "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” 
It's good to remember that we do not have to do it all on our own.