Ruins

It happens to all of us at time I guess. For some it’s a relationship. For some it’s work. For some it’s financial. It could be anything. Sometimes we might be able to see it coming. Sometimes we might be able to so something about it. Sometimes not. Sometimes, perhaps we could have predicted it. Some people say they predicted COVID-19. Or if they don’t claim to have predicted exactly COVID-19, they say they predicted something like it. And maybe they did. But it didn’t stop it happening did it? And that’s true of other things in life. And sometimes it leaves us in ruins. For some people that’s exactly what COVID-19 had done. For others it may be just a matter of time before the effects of the virus take hold. Sometimes the things we can’t see, can’t predict, or the things we might be able to predict but that happen anyway, leave us in ruins. Those relationships that go wrong; the investment that crashed; the job that didn’t deliver; the future that never materialised. Sometimes it’s our health, or rather our lack of health that leaves us in ruins. The accident that changed everything. The illness that took away our freedom. I went to visit my mum on Saturday evening. She suffered a heart attack on Friday evening. I wasn’t expecting that. And I don’t think she was either. I never thought my mum would suffer a heart attack. She’s always been extraordinarily healthy. I can’t remember her ever being ill when I was a kid. Or as an adult. But I went to visit her in Bournemouth hospital because she’d suffered a heart attack. In one way she was in ruins. She couldn’t remember anything much about what happened. She was groggy. She was tired. No doubt she is confused and probably anxious. In the words of Pink Floyd, she’s one step nearer to death. And death, we know is the ultimate ruin. Unless you’re my mum. I took a Bible with me because I know that’s the thing she’d most want with her in hospital. I read Psalm 139 to her and as I read, she kept nodding and agreeing with the words. And here’s the thing: death will not be ruin for my mum. One of my favourite singers is Bebo Norman. He wrote a song in which he sings: “Let my ruins become, the ground you build upon.” He’s inviting God to build on the ruins of his broken heart. My mum’s heart is broken. Al least it’s not working as it should right now. But she has invited God to build on that other broken heart, the one that determines what she will live for and where she will put her trust. And she has put her trust in the one who says there is no place you can go from his presence. Life throws all sorts of unexpected things at us that can ruin us. Like a heart attack. Ruins don’t have to be the end. Not if you do what my mum has. Life will probably be different if and when she recovers. But God will still be with her. If her body stops working altogether and she dies, God will still be with her. She will not think of that as ruin. She trusts that God will still be with her and he will build a whole new life on the ruins of death. I hope she recovers. Either way, God is present. Thanks mum, for reminding me that God is in the ruins in more ways than one.