Returning...

 

It’s interesting to read,or listen again, to some of the ‘Thought for the Day’ type pieces us clerics wrote two years ago as life ground to a halt. Some predicted there would be no ‘return to normal’. Instead the would be forever changed.

Well, I suppose the jury is still out on that one! However, I think it’s equally true that many of us have loved returning to many old traditions and former ways.

Undoubtedly most parents have appreciated their children being able to return to the routine of school and it’s been our experience at AFC that many have really enjoyed coming back to in person worship.

Yet the world is undoubtedly a different place and many of the former institutions or ‘ways of being’ we might have termed as ‘normal’ in the past have either totally disappeared or been significantly modified.

And we have changed too. So we bring our new and different selves to this 'returning’. And hopefully we do that in a spirit of thanksgiving as we appreciate afresh that which we temporarily lost.

As we move to the season of resurrection maybe it’s worth reflecting on Lazarus’ ‘returning’. His resurrection wasn’t to something new but old - his former way of life. We know his sisters rejoiced at this possibility - and we hope Lazarus did too! I suspect that family in Bethany lived everyday with a new and heightened sense of gratitude because the one they thought they had lost forever now occupied his seat at the table.

Returning. Resurrection. Thanksgiving.

All themes worth reflecting on as we walk from Maundy Thursday, through Good Friday and on into Easter Day.

Blog holiday next week!