Welcome to our beginning of term 2! I hope and pray you had an enjoyable and restful Easter and Resurrection Sunday.
Life in our household has certainly been different. The adults are finding the adjustment difficult while the kids are loving not having to go anywhere, being free to play and sitting down for two to three meals together each day has been a blessing.
Of course, there have been interesting times, there have been some ad hoc science experiments that the kids have decided to do. Like when something is labelled ‘highly flammable’, just how flammable is it? It turns out hand sanitiser does burn very effectively, I jumped in just before the deodorant can was tested. Then there was testing of what happens to different objects when thrown at a ceiling fan. So, the kids are adjusting well but this may change when they need to do school from home.
How are you going, how is your family going? Have you been surprised by anything? How are you feeling about the term ahead?
Just after the first Easter, not all of Jesus’s disciples had seen him rise from the dead. So the disciples were sad, confused and could not see the way forward, they had to adjust to a new ‘normal’, one they had not planned for nor imagined. The text in Luke says they were so focused on how things had been in the past that when walking down the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, they did not even recognise when Jesus came and walked along side them.
We have a new normal to adjust to, one just a few brief months ago we could not have even imagined. And change is never easy. I know when this is passed, I will value the freedom I have taken for granted up to this point, of meeting with others and doing things together as a community.
So how will we as a community ‘do’ the upcoming term? Maybe you are concerned about how to motivate your child or children. Or wondering how you will balance work and home time nad how will you delineate the two?
In Pauls first letter to the Corinthians, he speaks of peoples experience as ‘running a race’, and running in such a way as to not only finish but to win. I found this really helpful as a way of looking out over the term ahead. We need to run this race, so that we finish, but not just finish but also succeed. That success will take a level of kindness towards ourselves as to what our best is and looks like. We need to be sustainable in our practice. We all need to set up a plan for what success looks like in this new environment, because it is different to what success looks like when we can all be at work or school together. We have a new normal to adjust to, and my prayer for us all is that we do this ‘race’ well and we make sure we have practices in each day that make it both sustainable and enjoyable. Run in such a way as to finish the race.
As I conclude I would like to offer a prayer:
Jesus of the resurrection
You are here with us as we walk this journey
There are challenges, there are fears.
Help us to find ways through so that when this is done, we can look back with pride as individuals and as a community of people who responded to the challenge, who finished the race, who kept the faith.
Amen
