We are created to live with each other and draw strength and support from one another.
When this is restricted, we all suffer.
So, how do we manage in these unusual times?
Many of us have maintained personal contact by using the telephone, and others who are more up with technology have been able to use such means as FaceTime and Zoom, where you can virtually see a person and talk with them, even if you cannot touch them.
These are poor second cousins to our usual way of relating to each other, but they do enable us to keep in touch.
For those of us who do not have family or friends to connect with, this time is especially hard.
We cannot even have chance meetings in the street to engage briefly with someone else.
When we are not busy with social engagements but forced to be alone, we can be confronted by the bigger questions of life and wonder what the point of it is.
In these times it is helpful to dig deeper and consider there may be more to life than meets the eye.
Those of us who acknowledge there is a spiritual aspect to our being will have an added resource to draw upon.
For members of the Christian Church, our resource for successful living is not limited to ourselves or those around us.
We recognise the source of our being is the Lord God, creator of Heaven and Earth, and it is from this well of life that we draw upon in all times, but especially in times like these.
None of us can fully know or understand this God, but God has become known in the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Here we see the presence of God in a loving and compassionate person who seeks justice for all.
Knowing God in this way gives us confidence to lay our hearts open to God and seek help in hard times.
And when we do so, we are not alone, because God’s Spirit helps us to connect with God.
Our connection with God may not be felt in an exuberant display of emotions, although it can at times be so, but in that still, small voice that reassures us that we are not alone, that God is with us.
Nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus and in this time of pandemic we need to hold onto that truth more than ever.
We may be desperately missing the company of others but let us be assured that God will never leave us.
Find a nice quiet place and spend time with God.
Thank God for the beauty of the world that has not been harmed by the virus and be open to being uplifted in your soul.
God will not disappoint those who keep seeking.
May you be blessed.
Rev Michele Lees,
Echuca Moama Uniting Church
12°C