Come and sit
I hope all of you are ok and well but I know that also the ‘fear’ inside us begins to rise as all of the things we took for granted and were part of normal life get stripped away so if you need someone to talk with about what you are feeling we are here!!
A friend wrote to me on Tuesday – ‘if the churches are shutting does this mean Lent is cancelled and I can take up the wine again?’. Humour is a great thing to use at this time to help get us all through but I want to say Lent is most definitely not cancelled! Lent isn’t, as we said, a period where we give things up – you probably need to make sure the things that give you life are as far as possible in place at the moment – but it is a space where we reflect on our relationship with God.
It is now, as life changes on a daily basis that our reliance is on God and God alone. The wilderness was the place the early Christians chose to go to in order to meet God. The wilderness is spacious (not empty), quiet, unstructured, disorientating. It’s a place where our normal means of navigating the world don’t work – no phones, no email, no titles, no badges of honour, no fashion, no keys, no passwords. It is where we put down our habitual ways of being and learn new ways of being. And in the disorientation we discover God in places and ways we had never expected. It seems we are now in a wilderness not of our choosing, but let’s choose it anyway. Let’s look for the gifts as well as seeing the tragedies, let’s notice God in surprising places and ways. Let’s dig deep in the hope we have because people really need us to have something more.
When everything is stripped away there is a chance to hear the still small voice of God who whispers your name and asks you to ‘come and sit.’
Please look after yourselves and take care – you remain constantly in my prayers.
with love and blessings
Ruth