Thought for the Week

I recently came across a drawing which I thought was relevant in our present situation.

It is a picture of a trapeze swinging in mid-air and the words below say: ‘You let go of one trapeze with the faith that the new trapeze is on its way. In the meantime there’s nothing to hold onto.’

There is no sign of the trapeze artiste. Presumably he or she is suspended in mid-air waiting anxiously for the other trapeze.

The analogy of the trapeze and the church struck me. I imagined the trapeze artiste floating in mid-air, having let go of the security of one trapeze in the hope he or she would catch the next one.

The caption says: ‘Life is between the trapeze bars.’

I thought the church could respond that ‘faith is between the trapeze bars’.

The trapeze bars may symbolise the security of the past and the risk we take as we let go to ‘catch’ the future.

At present, when we seek new ways to worship, we are suspended in that mid-air gap between past and future.

The difference between the church and the trapeze artiste, however, is that we do have someone to hold onto as God is always with us. God has held us in the past, will hold us in the future and will also be with us in the gap.

You can’t catch the trapeze you have just let go. You have to focus on the one ahead of you and, with a leap of faith, catch it. What are your thoughts in the gap? One trapeze artiste said this: ‘The gap is a time of danger, of expectation, of uncertainty, of excitement, or extraordinary aliveness.’