Complex

Life it seems is complex. I’d like it to be simple so that I know what I need to do and how to do it. But it’s not like that. At least not for me. After a year of some tragic events, I was hoping for a smoother ride. But that doesn’t seem to be happening either. We’ve known that Lisa’s dad has cancer for a long time now, nearly twenty years in fact. But now it’s at critical point and he is facing the end of his earthly life. We don’t get to see him often. In fact I haven’t seem him in the flesh for nearly ten years, which is the last time I was able to visit him in California. Lisa has made three visits in that time, all because things weren’t looking good, but she went on her own. And if there’s one time we would really like to go it’s now, because he’s dying. But there’s a global pandemic on. What would have been relatively easy is now, complex. Looking through all the guidelines from the UK and the USA and trying to work out if we can visit, who visit and on what grounds, has been like looking for a needle in a haystack. Why someone can’t just write a list of things you need to know, I simply cannot fathom. And trying to work out if, and where, we’d have to quarantine is equally elusive. And then, we don’t know where we’ll end up going in the USA, because they are in the process of moving house! And not just across the road: from California to new Mexico, a distance of about 1,000 miles. Man, it couldn’t be more complex. Until you try to work it around significant dates, likes Meg and Justin’s first wedding anniversary, which, after a lovely, but very different wedding last year, we are simply not going to miss. Throw into the mix that the government, any government, might suddenly change the rules and you’ve just about covered it. Complex. What I have to hold onto because it’s what I’ve been learning through preaching about Jesus coming to his disciples by the lake, is that God is, in all this, closer than I think. And, although it’s really hard to face life in all its complexity, I have to hold onto the deep and profound truth that he has not, and will not abandon me, or Lisa, or Larry, the family in all the places they are, or anyone else affected by this complex set of challenges. I also want to hold before me the bigger and better story of God’s great and magnificent love, the love that never let’s us go, that never changes and never gives up on us. And the deep, deep truth, that nothing can separate us from that love. Not even death. I can’t pretend to understand how that love works, it’s complex. But the really good news is, I don’t need to. And neither do you.