Rollercoaster

I got a gift card for my birthday. Gift cards are great because you can choose a gift for yourself! And with this one I could choose a shop from a selection, so I had lots of choices. My problems started when I went to scrape off the strip on the back of the card to reveal the code. It’s supposed to come off easily. It didn’t. In fact it became a complete mess, so much so that I couldn’t see the whole code! Which meant the card was useless. Ahhhhg! A trip to Sainsbury’s , receipt in hand, ensued. But guess what? Although they sell the cards, they won’t have anything to do with it if it goes wrong. Oh no, you have to go online and contact the card company. Fat chance of that I thought. That’ll never work. But, because it was a gift, I thought I’d better give it a go. I managed to find the customer services part of the website and I wrote a very polite email explaining my predicament. To my great surprise, I got a lovely response for Roderick. He apologised and asked me to provide a picture of the card with the damaged strip, and if I had it, the receipt. Well, I did have the receipt when I went to Sainsbury’s, but somehow by now I’d lost it! I duly took the photos and explained I didn’t have the receipt. That’s that then, I thought. But no. Two days later I had another email from Roderick giving me the complete code and instructions for claiming a gift. And he thanked me for my patience! I was impressed, so I sent Roderick an email thanking him for his help (I can be kind sometimes). I proceeded to activate the code, chose my store and went to buy a gift. I found a new pair of swimming trunks and went to the checkout. Whatever I did it wouldn’t accept the code number I’d been given - it said it was an invalid code. Ahhhhg! I tried everything I could think of, but I didn’t have a four digit pin that I apparently needed as well! Roderick received another, not so polite email expressing my frustration. Explaining my frustration to Lisa , I demonstrated how ridiculous this situation was, only to discover that I hadn’t quite completed the process with the card, so I hadn’t in fact, yet got the correct code and four digit pin number I needed! Oooops! I completed the process, went back to the store, and, hey presto, was able to purchase a nice new pair of swimming trunks! I felt obliged to contact Roderick again and explain I had figured it out…and thanks for his patience! It struck me that the experience of flitting between excitement and frustration and disappointment and success was a microcosm of how life so often is. One moment it’s great, then next is isn’t. One moment there’s some good news, the next there’s some tragic news. It’s a rollercoaster. Up and down. Fast and slow. Exhilarating and frightening. Yesterday we received the heart breaking news that Lisa’s dad, who has been unwell for a long time now, most probably has a tumour that is life threatening. The prognosis is not good. A Zoom call is not good for that conversation. Frightening and devastating. Our emotions are on the rollercoaster. How do you process these things? How do we hold these things? How do we find a way through these things? How do we survive on the rollercoaster that is life? Job said that he had only survived by the skin of his teeth (Job 19:20). And sometimes it feels like that for us too. Perhaps we can do what Job chose to do: to live our story in the far bigger and far better story of God’s great love. To trust that God has it, however much we can’t see it. To trust that God has and holds our loved ones. To trust that God is at work even in the ruins: that God brings transformation is ways we might never know or understand.. Life is a rollercoaster. It is. But there is a God in heaven…