RICHARD KINGSLEY THOMAS, a pastor in London, reflects on the importance of faith at a time when weariness threatens to overcome…
London, UK
The writer Samuel Johnson said: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”. Well, London is tired. It’s empty, shut and stagnant. A new year has begun with new restrictions, more closures and much more illness. The only thing that’s not unprecedented is the dreary, damp weather.
Brexit finally happened and we’re all too tired to care. Louis Armstrong saw men shaking hands and sang, It’s A Wonderful World but in London, no-one is shaking hands. The fashion magazine Esquire is advising men to dress in ‘sadware’. Churches are damned if they open and damned if they don’t. Everything else is closed. 2020 left one in 20 of us suffering from COVID and many more with flu, cancer or depression. It doesn’t help that the rest of the country and Europe are faring so badly. There’s no escape and there’s no reprieve.
A woman passes a government conronavirus advert in central London, during England’s third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, on Thursday, 14th January, 2021. PICTURE: Dominic Lipinski/PA via AP.
Being ‘tired of’ is very different to ‘tired from’. When you’re tired from a long journey, it can feel good (if I remember right!) But being tired of working from home is awful. The exhaustion you feel after putting the children to bed is so much worse when you feel the burden of their schooling the next day. Health workers, who often thrive on the thrill of keeping people alive, are more than just tired in today’s Britain. Their trembling voices ask, “How long can this go on?” or worse still, “How long can I go on?” We are tired of coping, tired of masks, tired of Zoom, tired of living like sardines and, especially, tired of government. Weary is the word for ‘tired of’ people and 2020 has left 20 in 20 Londoners with weariness seeping deep within. This is a weariness plague.
“I retreat to the first few words of Scripture when our planet was a desolate chaos. It tells of “darkness over deep” but there was something else. Over that mess was the Spirit of God moving like a wind hovering above all the global currents. Light and life and order and beauty followed.”
People this depleted discover hidden depths and it’s not always pretty. There are monsters down there. There is envy and entitlement along with rage and resentment. Tired people lack the energy to hold them under the surface. It feels like Charles Dickens was writing about us when he wrote: “In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the usual harmless ways of life were changed”. With so much darkness around and the dark depths within what can be done?
I retreat to the first few words of Scripture when our planet was a desolate chaos. It tells of “darkness over deep” but there was something else. Over that mess was the Spirit of God moving like a wind hovering above all the global currents. Light and life and order and beauty followed.
It has long been a conviction of mine that we under-estimate the hovering, brooding presence of God above our chaos. When visiting a sick person for the first time I’m always a bit nervous. Some people have been tragically damaged in the name of Jesus. Others are angry that they are so ill. My mantra, as I knock on their door, is ‘God is always there before me’. I imagine, and now almost see, the Spirit of God, brooding over them, unafraid of scepticism, anger or confusion. Time-after-time the work of the Spirit is seen.
Just as Martin Luther King, Jr, said the arc of the universe is bent towards justice, it is also bent towards light, comfort and hope. The hungry will be filled, the mourning will be comforted and the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor.
We can all spot the movements of the Spirit. In the UK, they are easy to see in the work of Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford. A few see it in his helping his team to top the premiership but we all see it in his powerful, uncompromising campaigning for the poorest children of England to be properly fed. We see it in volunteers collecting food for the hungry outside my supermarket and those who stack the shelves inside. We see it in the countless scientists producing vaccines to relegate this present darkness to the past.
But it’s better than that. Before we are told anything else about the Spirit we know He is above the darkness over the deep, before there are any signs of life. The point is, that the Spirit is there when you can’t get out of bed. When you haven’t washed, He is there. The pregnant work of God in you does not depend on the brightness of your face or the state of your new year’s resolutions. God’s breath moves over you when there are monsters within and COVID all around. The breath of Almighty God swirls around you when breathing feels impossible. It is the worn-out and the weary that still get the invitation from Jesus. The Spirit is just down the road from me now with a community coming to terms with the fatal stabbing of one of it’s members. For the dying and the grieving, there is special hope in their sadness. There is a Shepherd in that dark valley and an ancient Easter promise.
French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin prayed: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God”. We can nudge one another to better practices and attitudes for a new you in this strange new year but if you don’t, that same eternal Spirit will be hanging around you full of promise. Words and acts of light and life will follow. Until they do, here are a few words of blessing for the worn-out and weary of London or anywhere else:
May that same eternal Spirit over your head breeze into your thinking.
May He breathe in your eyes and all you’re seeing.
In your heart and your feeling.
Your lungs and your breathing
Your mouth and your talking
Your hands and your doing.
May He waft through your home, and propel your journeys.
May He heal your depths and dispel your darkness.
And may God’s Wind gently whisper the words of Jesus:
Come to me all who are weary
My yoke is easy
My burden is light.
You will find rest for your soul.
