We have a new pup at home and recently she has discovered a new favourite sleeping place, below the armchair. In a few weeks Bella will be too big to fit under there, but along with her bed which has high walls around and sleeping against our legs or against the sofa, it’s clear that she likes to sleep in a place that has a measure of safety and the reassurance of some kind of shelter.
Harriet and I have been attending an online Anglican conference earlier this week called ‘Beyond the Storm’, full of really helpful talks and seminars and discussions as church leaders look at where we have got to and start to look at the new landscape emerging as the storm of Covid slowly passes on(we hope). It’s a little like the closing scenes of a disaster movie that I watched in which a family just makes it to a remote place for shelter as a cataclysm shakes the world ( I can’t actually remember what it was now) in an extinction level event. The deep doors close just in time as the shockwaves hit (keeping the dramatic tension to the very last minute). Then we scroll forward 9 months later as the survivors open the great doors and emerge into what is left after the storm ( I think it was meteors). Blinking they come out into the weak sunshine to find a changed but recognisable earth and slowly messages come in over the radio from other small similar bands that have made it through and as those voices come over the airwaves the film fades away to the credits.
The message is clear, the shelter has saved them, but now it is time to slowly emerge and rebuild what they can, a new day is dawning and there is hope beyond the great suffering and loss. And so it is with us today. Small signs of hope are already emerging even just in our own church; as I write we are painting a prayer labyrinth and a few markers for children to play on our church grounds. Our Fence of Sorrow and Hope launches tomorrow as a public space for folk to mark in different ways the passing of this year on March 23rd. And of course spring flowers are everywhere now and the buds are starting to appear and even unfurl in some places. And we are moving towards Easter morning.
And of course the God who promises us shelter: Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty is also the God who leads us out into the new morning You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace. None of this is easy or guaranteed, but as we can be thankful for what shelter we had during the storm of the last year so we can know that as times slowly change we do well to recover and rebuild together with others. Just this morning I came across a scheme to “spread colour and pollinator havens by spreading a free pouch of bee-diverse wildflower seeds”. Couldn’t put it better myself!
Rev. Paul Watson
