The Great Pause

The world has, for the most part and for most people, stopped.
I used to joke “Stop the world I want to get off”. Crazy eh? Well the world just did stop. The mad rush of life. The endless and incessant tyranny of the clock. The list of things. The diary, the schedule, the plans, the pressures. Stopped. Everything is on hold.
It’s like in the movies where there is this ‘thought’ moment when the hero of the story has this moment when everything around them is frozen in time and they alone are left with their thoughts. They gain clarity, they see what is truly going on and know what they must do.
But are we ‘seeing’? Are we stopping or are we just trying to be busy in other ways? Are we just trying to ignore the stillness and silence, drowning it out with the noise in our heads and TVs, on social media, news channels as we are absorbed in the unfolding crisis, just waiting for everything to kick off again.
But what does it matter if it just means a return to the same blind racing around, destroying our lives, our planet, our peace, if we do not take time to rethink our lives? To reappraise the value of incessant consumerism on the planet, society and especially those that get left behind in the ‘human’ race. We have time to reflect on what is truly important, to re-evaluate the value of what we have valued most, have we got it wrong?
Do we really want just a resuscitated existence?
Or do we long for life with a capital L, Life in all its fulness, Life that has peace and joy and completeness at its heart?
In the Christian tradition on Easter Saturday we remember Jesus' buriel in the tomb. We think about the disciples hiding from the authorities - a kind of self imposed lockdown - not knowing what to do or what was going to happen. They could not easily go back to their old lives - they had seen and experienced too much just to forget but what could they do? They waited. And we wait too.

Jesus is in the tomb. He is buried.  No more meetings. No more preaching. No more sacred meals. No words. No moves. No breath Just death. Just waiting.
But resurrection is coming.

And Resurrection is not the same as resuscitation.
The resurrected Jesus calls us to live in the light of his resurrection.
The old has gone. The new has come. The offer of new life is for now. Not in some arbitrary time in the future. But Now.

So while you wait why not give some thought to your life. Maybe explore this Jesus fella. See what he has to say.

Every blessing

Tim