Interesting times!

We really don’t know what will happen next, unknown implications of the disruption to normal life. Beyond medical symptoms of coronavirus, feeling panicky, tearful and weary – honestly, that’s normal now, part of the disease happening around us.

Jobs threatened, or lost, financial worries, how to entertain and feed hungry children home from school, to actually be with a partner and family 24 hours a day! In such intense and prolonged situations, under the spotlight now are worries normally ignored and covered over by the day-today busyness of life and the distractions of Netflix in one room, X-box or Sky sports in another.

Self-distancing brings relationships and interdependence into focus.

How to deal with all the implications; the cracks in relationships with partners and children; neighbours who can’t be ignored any more; how can something that started in remote China make such a difference to life here!

How will I get through this, or perhaps, how do we get through this? Coronavirus has brought into focus the disease and sickness in relationships individually and in society.

Is it time to face the challenge of resetting values? It’s painful now but perhaps, more importantly, in the long term community will re-emerge and we’ll realise we really are all in this together.

People of faith have always accepted we are part of something much bigger than ourselves; living is about ‘we’ and not ‘I’. Even at the most difficult times we are not alone. ‘God’, however defined, is with us through those standing alongside us, today, tomorrow and always.

Rev Fiona Ogg, Acharacle andArdnamurchan Parish Churches.