THIS UNBEARABLE HOLIDAY: HOPING | DAVID BRACEWELL

“He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us;

On him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.”

2 Corinthians 1.10

It’s Saturday morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing manically as they have done since lockdown began, Sue is reading the paper and I am up the garden with pen and paper and coffee. Bliss.

Mind Games

The mind is a strange thing. Yesterday I felt all at sea, today I can feel solid ground beneath my feet. In a little booklet entitled “Where is God in a coronavirus world?”, the Cambridge mathematician John Lennox quotes C. S. Lewis who says, talking about atomic bombs, “They may break our bodies but they need not dominate our minds.” Lewis urges people not to huddle together like frightened sheep thinking about bombs, but, he says, if the bombs come let them find us doing sensible and human things “praying, working, teaching, reading, bathing the children…” For bomb substitute virus. The difference for us of course is that we would love to huddle together, frightened or not, but at the moment that is not possible.

So I need to fix my mind, more than I do, on God my heavenly Father so that despair may give place to hope. Which brings me back to the question, “Where is God in the coronavirus?”

Where Is God?

Do I believe that God has sent the virus as punishment? No I don’t. I’ve been reading Albert Camus’ novel, “The Plague” (which is possibly why I’ve been a bit depressed! “Read something cheerful!”, Sue says.) At the height of the devastation in the town of Oran, the austere local priest, Father Paneloux, preaches a sermon. The opening words are nearly as devastating as the plague. “My brethren, a calamity has befallen you; my brethren, you have deserved it.” He goes on to say that the plague comes because God has been forgotten. “...This is why, tired of waiting for you to come to him, he has allowed the scourge to visit you as it has visited all the cities of sin since history began.” So no, our pestilence is not a judgement.

Do I believe we have, in some measure, brought it upon ourselves? Well that’s a complex question and I would hesitate to give a categorical “No”. Do I believe that God will use this time to bring good out of the destructive work of the pestilence? Yes, I do. That’s what he does. That is the meaning of the cross. Our world is undeniably flawed. Bad things happen, through accident, through malicious design, through “natural disasters”. The dream of progress, through science and education, to some human utopia has been long since shattered. We are broken people living in a broken world and we need rescue, salvation. And the God who is with us in all circumstances including the present ones will rescue us. Nothing is beyond his creative, renewing love.

Rescued Into Reality

But what if God’s way of bringing good out of evil is not simply to remove what causing our distress? I think of rescue as escaping from the present situation and returning to some sort of normality. But what if God wants to rescue me in lock down rather than out of it? To rescue me today into a deeper relationship with himself, into a clearer and more painful facing of my own anxieties, into a greater care for family and friends, into a sharper awareness of the pain of the world, into a creative exploration of the things he is calling me to do which so far have been kept at bay by the noisy demands of normal life. What if God wants to rescue me out of my day dreams into reality?

Of course this doesn’t negate the hope that one day things will change and we shall be released from our present limitations. As we move out of lock down God will be going before us. “Such a fast God, always leaving just as we’re arriving” as the Welsh poet R.S. Thomas puts it. Paul, contemplating his own pestilence, the persecution which often led him to the ultimate lock down of a prison cell, sees God’s rescue as an ongoing process. He has rescued, he is rescuing and he always will.

We must never forget the final rescue that God has prepared for us.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See the home of God is with mortals.

He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.””

Revelation 2.1

We have a few very old friends who tell us they are ready for the final adventure of death. Not “passing away” as we often say, but passing into the life that is life indeed. Personally, I’m not quite ready yet, but I can catch their deep sense of anticipation.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,

no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”

1 Corinthians 2.9

So today has been a better day. I’ve not exactly been flooded with hope, but at least there’s been a trickle. Something to build on in the days ahead.

“Eternal God,

calm and quieten our souls;

keep us humble and filled with hope

and trusting as we live in your love;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.”