I Didn't See That Coming!

Wednesday's Lockdown

     This past week has meant a lot of change for Nova Scotians, in a relatively short amount of time. It’s made planning a bit more of a challenge: we have shifted gears with restrictions and limitations being adjusted as the COVID outbreaks have increased dramatically.
     And yet, with just about every conversation I’ve had, people have commented: “Well, we kinda saw it coming… didn’t we?”
Indeed, we did. 
     Because life is unlike the whodunnit mystery novels I enjoy reading, with sudden shocking plot twists. Life tends to have signs and patterns, we can track trends and likelihoods and possibilities. So while a week ago we were hoping to avoid a lockdown, as we watched case numbers and listened to experts, many of us started to recognise and guess that this current situation was on the horizon.
     Paying attention to patterns and trends is important: for easy things like tracking weather or monitoring social media content, to more difficult areas like creating a budget or predicting immigration trends. 
     This, perhaps, is why Jesus was so often inviting us to pay attention to the world around us, to notice the nuance, to recognise the changes as they happened. We watch the changing of the seasons in the world, as magnolias bloom and dandelions burst forth (wow do they burst forth!) and birds return. 

     So too we are invited to pay attention to the rhythms and patterns in our spiritual lives; so that when our hearts speak and our prayers change and we recognise we are in a different spiritual footing than we were previously, we feel firm in that footing, comfortable, and expected – and we don’t have a moment of exclaiming “I didn’t see THAT coming!”

Mt 24.36: But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.