Rev Maggie reflects

Reflections during Lockdown No 3 – looking forward

As I began writing this the rain was falling.  The weather had definitely changed and even though I knew just how much we need the rain I couldn’t help looking back longingly at the sunshine. When the present is bleak and the future uncertain it is all too easy to want to look backwards instead.

Looking backwards is fine if it helps us understand the present and prepare for the future but not if it leaves us stuck in the past.  Lot’s wife was turned to a pillar of salt as she looked back at her home in Sodom.  I can almost see the bitter salt tears that instead of helping her left her stuck where she was, unable to go forward.  Dwelling on the past prevents us from finding the new life that God has promised.  Jesus said “I have come that they may have life, life in all its fullness” . (John 10, 10) Life with the risen Christ is not more of the same but new and more abundant.

In his Easter sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury of Canterbury said “we cannot be content to go back to what was before as if all was normal.  There needs to be a resurrection of our common life, something that links the old to the new but is different and more beautiful.”    At this stage in the pandemic, we cannot see the way to a future that is different and more beautiful.  There is no chart for responding to COVID-19.  Thankfully, in addition to warning us not to look back, the bible tells us how to go forward when there is no map and no path.   Isaiah, writing during the wilderness of exile, heard God say

“Remember not the former things

nor consider the things of old.

Behold I am doing a new thing,

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert

to give drink to my chosen people.”

(Isaiah 43, 18,19, 20c, 21)

God makes the way and then walks every step of it with us even when, as now, we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.  And as we struggle on, looking forward wondering what life will be like when we emerge from lockdown, we can be sure, like the psalmist, that God will remain with us, to comfort and sustain us always. The Good Shepherd will bring us into the new life that he has promised us.

Psalm 23.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.

3 He shall refresh my soul and guide me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me and your rod and staff comfort me

5 you spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me you have anointed my head with oil and my cup overflows.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.