thought for the week

ARE you still planning to use this lockdown time to write that novel, learn that language or play the guitar that’s been sitting in the spare room since Christmas 2017?

Or have you given up on the comforting pretence that you’ll use this time to do something constructive and collapsed into a state of glazed-eyed telly or screen watching?

Well, don’t beat yourself up about it too much.

It’s hard being in the ‘between times’. Like the space where the waves meet the shore (it’s called the ythlaf by the way), we’re in a constantly shifting place that is neither fully one thing nor the other.

We can’t go back to the way things were, but we don’t yet know how to move forward.

Funnily enough, that’s the situation Jesus’s disciples found themselves in after Jesus returned to his Father and before he sent the Holy Spirit to empower them.

Like many of us today, the disciples must have been very unsure, if not downright fearful, of what the future held, uncertain how they would continue to support themselves and those they loved.

All they could do was choose to wait, stay hopeful and sort out the things they could sort out.

And in the end, perhaps all most of us can do is the same: to choose to wait out the virus, stay hopeful and do whatever good we can.

After all, the space between what was and what will be is full of unrealised possibilities.

So let’s step out in faith and trust that with God’s help we’ll find that the gaps created by everything we’ve left behind might be flooded with things that are closer to what we truly need.