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Many of you will have experienced the frustration of trying to close an overfull suitcase, fit everything into the car for a family holiday with little children and all the equipment associated with babies, or pack a few items too many into an overfull cupboard.
All my adult life I have been quite rigidly organised in the way I plan my time. I do not do spontaneity if I can help it. The upside is that I have always been able to fit a great many different tasks and interests into a week. The downside is that, at my busiest in my 40s and 50s, I could not accommodate anything new for about three weeks.
In retirement I hoped to be more flexible, but I was warned by friends that it does not get any better. If you were one of those people, you were quite right. This was brought home to me recently when two days of emergency childcare were needed in the family and I could only partly respond.
Virtue – I honour commitments and do what I say I will do, when I say I will do it.
Vice – I am a useless father, grandfather, husband or friend when an urgent response is needed.
Last week we watched the unfolding tragedy of the final days of Jesus’s life before he was condemned to death and crucified. We saw rigid religious observance in the way his body was handled after death, following strict rules. This week began with the spontaneous reaction of those who found that Jesus had deserted his tomb. The period we are in now is about things that do not follow any human plan, but only the plan of God. We can regulate procedures and even the processes surrounding death, but not the resurrection of God.
I find myself wondering how I would have coped on Easter morning. How would I have responded if Jesus had appeared beside me while I was out for a walk? How would I have reacted to a figure appearing in a room through locked doors?
A Prayer
Lord, help me to balance the virtues of reliability and spontaneity, and to recognise the vices of unreliability and unhelpfulness. Thank you that you turned the world upside down at Easter and shattered the relentless inevitability of sin and death. We praise you for the new life that we have through your death and resurrection. Amen.