The Eternal Stones

The people who have returned to the church for worship are very glad to be there. Those who have not over the last two Sundays fall into several groups. There are people who feel it's too soon to return to physical worship because it's too soon to be doing anything at the moment, except what's strictly necessary. There are people who can't come because they are looking after an elderly relative they are concerned about. There's a congregation member who said she and her husband are running a business 'forty mortgages are dependent on' and until September at least neither of them can afford to be ill. You can see where they're coming from. 

The most interesting conversation about this was with Tara who came into the church on her own while it was open for prayer and left almost in tears at the mere sight of the furniture spread out for physically-distanced worship. 'I just can't get my head round it', she told me. 

'Church' is supposed to be a point of stability in a life which anything but stable and for some the intrusion of instability into the very place it should least belong hurts too much. It's all very well saying that our sense of permanence, of faith, should rest on God, not on the transient phenomena of churches and stonework and - by extension - our lives that pass so quickly. But the paradox of the Christian life is that we can only experience the eternal for which we yearn by means of the temporal. We all have our own versions.