Rev'd Robyn Boyd(Locum)
As I write this, my internet is down and suddenly, my world changes.
I’m dealing just fine with all the Covid restrictions – apart from unbeknown contact with carriers of the virus, I am able to keep safe. I have some control. When it comes to the internet – my portal to the world outside – I’m helpless! I ring the tech support line, and am told by an automated voice that enquiries are dealt with online. Very helpful when you have no “online”! Eventually, it’s all worked out, and I’m offline for about a day and a half.
Life can change in a flash. The internet going down is trivial. We lived well without such miraculous communication systems 30 odd years ago. Covid 19 changed our world suddenly; and certainly changed our ways of communicating. Thank God for contemporary technologies, even with the glitzes they can serve us.
Many of us will also have experienced unforseen or sudden personal events where life as we’ve known it disappears, to be overtaken by an unsolicited and often raw new reality. Whilst we can afffirm and know that God is with us, peace and relief may be intermittent – head and heart may not neessarily feel like they’re working together. Yet our God’s reality is of a “peace which passes all understanding…...” When you look up our Psalm for this Sunday –Psalm 90 – read on to Psalm 91, and allow yourself to sink into the words throughout that Psalm….”You who live in the shelter of the most high…..…under his wings you will find refuge ………You will not fear the terror of night…or the pestilence that stalks in the darkness…For he will command his angels concerning you…on their hands they will bear you up. Those who love me, I will deliver. When they call to me, I will answer them. I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honour them…”
Meanwhile, having no internet took back stage as I pondered heartfelt issues of people’s lives and of the world, lifting these to the Lord. How wonderful it is to have words from the Psalms in which to wrap our own own thoughts and prayers: “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust”