Entering the Conversation

Anxiety skips around the world faster than a pandemic virus infiltrating hearts and homes, isolation barriers leaving them ironically unprotected. Some are more prone than others. Some lean in to negative news, convinced of the gory end. 

The People of the World are locked down in their homes. Will our house arrest prove to be rehabilitative, or will we reach the end like so many caged animals, worse for wear, but none the wiser? Time will tell. 

I hesitate to enter the conversation - there is so much chatter anyway. What is one more opinion? One more voice? One more well-meaning mentor adding straws of instructions onto our backs of things we should be doing during this time?

My pastor prays next to me, in the same bed that he sleeps, and God impresses this passage on his mind:

No one knows the day, no one knows the hour that the Son of Man will come again. 

Stay awake! Be ready! Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time?

And he asks me, “In this time, what does your faithfulness look like? What of wisdom? Over whom have you been set, and what would their food be at this, the proper time?”

And I realise. Despite local isolation and global connectedness, God has put us into households and communities. He has gathered people to you, and he has gathered people to me, and faithfulness does not look like abandoning our posts to the professionals on the web.  

These children are mine to teach, and even sometimes entertain, and these friends are mine to care for and connect with. These followers are mine to encourage and equip, this local community needs each of us to play our parts.

And I smile at the fact that God has used my own local pastor, and yes, my own husband, to teach me. At a time when I could listen to any preacher in the world, he uses the man who shares my pillow.

And so I enter this conversation, not as a professional, and not to give you yet one more opinion, but because the world needs each of us to play our part. The ‘vision verse’ God gave me many months ago is this: 

Wisdom is a deep well of understanding opened up within you as a fountain of life for others. 

And what is a fountain if no-one sees it play, if no-one tastes the liquid life that comes from within? The fountain itself dries from lack of purpose.

And God has been teaching me a few things, filling my well with wisdom, leading me in life liturgies and I decide to share. 

So if I’m one of your teachers, and not just another voice adding burdens on your back, follow along for some Lockdown Liturgy! We’ll look at the ways of Jesus that are ways of life. Ways of grace that turn gory end into glory end, weariness and worry into prayer and peace.

And perhaps you’ll enter the conversation, too? Faithfully administering the bread you’re baking (who knew so many of us could bake?) to the households that have been put in your care. Daily bread from heaven’s table apportioned off to family and friends.

#lockdownliturgy