Mind the gap!

Last week we spent half term in Portugal where the summer seems to be going on forever!  It was 30 degrees in Lisbon when we left on Saturday, 12 degrees here when we got off the plane at Luton!!

Somewhere, as we flew across France, we were ‘in transition’!

It feels a bit like that every time I walk out the door.  The apples are now all off the trees in the front garden and the acer leaves round the back have now turned golden or red.  There is a definite smell of autumn in the air because during these early November days nature is in transition too, moving us on to a new season.

Yet it feels a bit like we are still ‘in between’.  Some days the sun is strong and I wondered why I put on such a thick coat.  Yet earlier this week I was thankful for the gloves I found in my pocket and put them on for the first time since last April!

We all have to live the ‘gaps’ between things.

This weekend the lectionary readings include the Beatitudes and those words about the gentle inheriting the earth or the hungry being satisfied come across as ‘aspirational’.  It’s a new way of seeing things and it belongs to God’s Kingdom.  We live in days when the merciful are not always shown mercy and when a bereaved person may not feel fully comforted. 

We live in the gap between life as it is and life as it will be.

Yet, the gap is a good place to be!  It helps us cope with the here and now because we have a hope and a sense of goodness that is still before us.  We are not people who believe we are walking towards desolation.  Something of the ‘coming kingdom’ breaks into our present reality and gives us the ‘blessedness’ of which Matthew 5 speaks.

Rather than ‘minding the gap', I believe we can rejoice in it!