It's good to be back!

It’s good to be back! Isn’t that what we say when we’ve been away somewhere: it’s good to be back. And, mostly, it is. We like to be away, but the truth is we like to get home again .too. There’s something about home. Apparently the ideal is to be away for ten days. Two weeks is too long, A week is too short. But ten days is about right. Anyway, it was good to get away for a few days (didn’t quite achieve ten days). And it’s good to be back. I think! Thing is, we are still in a strange world aren’t we? As I look around so much of life sees back to “normal”. There are no queues at the supermarket; we can get a Tesco delivery again; I drove down to Brighton last week and went shopping; I’m bac in the gym and the pool; football starts again this evening. But then so much of life is anything but “normal”. We can’t meet in the groups we’d like to; you have to book to go out or to the cinema; we have to stand a long way from others; there is hand gel everywhere and we can’t gather to worship in the way we would love to! In fact, the one thing I really want to do, is the one thing I can’t do! And I’m not sure I’m up for that anymore. It’s been fun and challenging in equal measure, but I’m ready to be done with it now. I don’t want to go back to it! Part of the problem, I think, is that I just have no idea how long this will go on. If I knew how much longer we’d be out of the church building I could pace myself. I could start to plan for the future. I could start to get excited about what we could do and how we might do it. But I don’t know. We can make some changes, sure. We’ve bought some kit so we can live stream from the church. Exciting! We might be able to involve more people. Great. But we’re not where we want to be. There are some churches in the US (and maybe here too) that have decided it’s time to take a stand. They’ve decided that the government has no right to tell them they can’t meet to worship, so they’re holding services! Wow! There are times when it would be right for Christians to defy a government. But not, in my opinion, here, over this. It’s not persecution. It’s practical common sense in the light of a pandemic! And we need to be good citizens and play our part n helping to fight the virus, not put ourselves and others at risk. Yes it’s hard and frustrating, but we’re in this together. I would love to be back in the church leading services and teaching. I really would. I love it. I absolutely love it. But! But! If I’m honest I’m not looking forward to the next part of this journey. There are too many unknowns. I’ve told you before: I’m a plodder! Change is challenge. And the unknown can be frightening. At least for me. What I have to do now I’m realising, is to keep doing what I know to be right. I need to keep plodding in the right direction. I need to do the best I can within the context of how life is right now. I need to be obedient to my call as best I know how. I’d really like to fast forward through this bit (I’ve said that before at other times of life too). But that’s not how life works. And it’s not how God works either. He doesn’t fast forward us through the challenging times. He doesn’t even take us around them. But he does promise something rather good. He promises that he will walk with us through the challenging times. He says that in Psalm 23 through David’s words: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death (literally the hardest and most challenging times of life), you are with me, your rod and staff they comfort me.” I can hold onto that promise as I negotiate my way through this next stretch. And so can you.