Wouldn’t it be delightful to begin to think of lessons we might want to take with us out of lockdown? We are not free yet. The virus has not gone away. We know difficulties lie ahead.
But one of the things which has helped me in all these months, is discovering again how important pattern, rhythm and even timetables are. We have lived in a very disorderly time, with pressures to respond, like working from home, overcoming all the usual boundaries. But many of us have also had to be really creative to negotiate time, monotony, emptiness.
The church helps us. By its constant invitation to pray, at home and with our church community. By its rhythm of seasons and festivals, which leads us through our year, challenging us to find fresh meaning. Even if we seem to have spent most of the last year in a prolonged Lent, we are now seeking ways to prepare for Holy Week and Easter. Meanwhile every week gives us a Sabbath, a day when we can receive new energy to rest and refocus.
As we meet one another again in church and elsewhere we will need, in addition to our established customs, new patterns of commitment to match different priorities, changed circumstances. May God give us grace to respond generously to all that lies ahead.
Lord, help us to use your gift of time well in all that we do; that our days may be filled with your eternal life. Amen.