I have decided that our family is weird, there are four of us living in the house, each with different sleeping arrangements, I am one of those people that is a morning person and am often at my desk working around 4am, which means that I am not very late turning in on a night. My wife and daughter are evening people and tend to go to bed later and get up later, and my son-in-law is a bit like a hamster and is just going to bed as I am getting up, which means that there is seldom a point in any day when we are all asleep at the same time. This year the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis have been more prevalent than I can remember at any time in my life. I have never actually witnessed this amazing, God given light display personally, and it feels to be very unusual to be seeing scenes like this in southern Suffolk.
Please forgive the quality of the picture, it was taken on a mobile phone at about 2am from our back bedroom window, but it gives you an idea of the wonderful display witnessed by my son in law who loves this kind of thing. Indeed, he was so excited that he woke his wife to ensure she didn’t miss out. Thankfully, rather than waking us, he decided that a photograph would suffice.
I am one of those people who burdens myself with things that are way outside my control, I found the whole experience of the pandemic extremely stressful as I attempted to guide the Circuit of (at that time) eighteen Churches through the challenges of lockdown when nothing seemed to work, and the rulebook was useless. There was a feeling of making things up as I went along and felt wholly responsible. The problem with this approach to life is that we can feel that if we not living life at a hundred miles per hour, trying to resolve everything for those around us, that the whole thing will fall to pieces.
Therefore, I find this picture quite humbling, because while I am fast asleep, oblivious of what is going on in the world, something amazing is happening. I am grateful to my son-in-law, had he not taken this picture I would have been unaware that the Northern Lights had been visible this far south. It got me thinking about what else happens while I am sleeping, and the truth is that the world never goes to sleep. Living where we do, just a quarter of a mile from the main train line from the Felixstowe port, I can hear the train with dozens of containers making their way around the country. People are working, plants are growing and just because I am comatose, it doesn’t mean that the whole of life comes to a standstill.
It is good to know that while we sleep soundly in our beds, nature gets on with what needs to be done and god never sleeps but continues to work his miracles while we know nothing of it.