Tuesday 21 April 2020

TUESDAY 21ST APRIL 2020

Good morning friends.

I woke up this morning to hear on the news that we are now into the 5th week of lockdown. I admit I had to go and check the calendar to make sure that was in fact the case, for it seems to me that the time has passed very quickly. I guess that there are others for whom this is true, and yet I know that for some people the time will have felt a real drag.

As ever I am conscious that I am very blessed to live and work in such beautiful surroundings, and that being is isolation is not a difficult thing to cope with. I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like for folks trying to manage their days in high rise flats with 3 or 4 young children to try to occupy each day. I know a member of my own family was very stressed in the first few weeks having children home from nursery, and she not being able to access groups which have been a support to her in recent months. It has taken time for the family to readjust to this new way of being.

We do not know how many more weeks we will have to contend with lockdown and social distancing..................it’s a case of just taking it one day at a time and..............the Lena Martell song has been much in my head these last few days.

If there ever was a time when we have to take one day at a time, it’s now when the coronavirus is upending the world as we once knew it.

I find myself thinking of that old elephant joke: How do you eat an elephant?

“One bite at a time.”

How do we get through these days in lockdown?

One day at a time.

As the virus spread throughout the world, perhaps for the first time ever we, (humanity,) find ourselves all in the “same boat”

For the family of Christians this is a familiar scenario. In fact the image of the “boat” is often used to describe the Church.

Boats feature in the life and ministry of Jesus.

We read in Mark’s gospel of a time when the disciples were in a boat and caught up in a storm. I comes after the feeding of the 5000.

After saying good-bye to the people, he went away to a hill to pray. When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, while Jesus was alone on land. He saw that his disciples were straining at the oars, because they were rowing against the wind; so sometime between three and six o'clock in the morning, he came to them, walking on the water. He was going to pass them by, but then they saw him walking on the water. “It's a ghost!” they thought, and screamed. They were all terrified when they saw him.

Jesus spoke to them at once, “Courage!” he said. “It is I. don’t be afraid!” Then he got into the boat with them, and the wind died down. The disciples were completely amazed..................

Perhaps some of us are feeling “all at sea” at the moment. Perhaps we have our “moments” when we wonder if we can keep going. Maybe we are starting to become overwhelmed by the strain of this storm. If so, Let us hear these words of hope and encouragement from Jesus..

Jesus is watching out for us, and he is coming to us with the same words he spoke to his frightened disciples all these years ago.

Listen to him speaking to us today, “Courage, it is I. Don’t be afraid,"

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Maybe you remember this wee song from Sunday School

With Jesus in the boat I can smile at the storm,

Smile at the storm, smile at the storm,

As I go sailing home.