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As I engage in conversation with many people, I often hear an observation, sometimes a fear, that when this pandemic is over, the world will be quite different than it was pre-COVID 19. And I agree. But I’m not fearful – I’m actually quite curious.
As a teenager growing up in Edmonton, I attended Ross Shephard High School that was next to Coronation – a large urban park. And during those fall days of a new school year and those magnificent late spring and early summer days of the prairies, friends and I would gather to spread out on the grass, bask in the sun and often ponder what life might have in store for us. Where would we go to University? What kind of a life partner might we choose? Where in the world did, we hope to travel to?
And if anyone had suggested that I would enter retirement as a United Church Minister living on Vancouver Island; I would have wondered what they might have been smoking – because it was so far out of my realm, that it was not even possible. Yet, here I am. (and loving it!)
I’ve been blessed in my life that I always left room for spirit to move and it has taken me to places and experiences, I could never have imagined. But I always have had to let go of the life that I envisioned for one not yet imagined.
My fear, is that we are so committed to the life we were living, the life we had planned, that we won’t be open to the life that is waiting for us on the other side of this pandemic. If we are only focused on rebuilding what was, we’ll construct barriers to our new life. The spirit can only move in our lives when we give it space to move. If we build a barrier, to keep the spirit out, then we are on our own.
For, the world will never be the same. I think we’ll have opportunities to think about how the air quality changed when the economy slowed. And how we were intentional about reaching out to one and other. Perhaps how we work and socialize will change. Maybe this is the end of the most affluent time in human history.
I don’t know what this new world will look like. I do know that I want to be open to the spirit and all of the possibilities that might unfold. I trust that God is with us and the spirit is moving among us. I know that when we hold up the dream of justice and compassion that Jesus has for this world, as our beacon, that life will be good.
And so my friends, these are interesting times that we live in and I pray that the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer will nourish you and amaze you in the days to come.
Blessings, Wayne