Fifty Eight Days of Being Closed - Uncertainties Abound

At the start it was easy. We knew that there was a terrible foe to fight and we all needed to play our part. Coming back from those deepest days of lockdown is not going to be easy. The close down was clear. How to reopen again will be less straightforward. There is the desire to get back to a more normal way of life. But it's so hard to see the best way to get there.

The government has been massively criticised for not providing enough detail or time to make changes and plans before the changes its proposed are made. They had clearly been talking about what they were going to tell us for days and days. Explaining those ideas to the rest of us proved more difficult than expected.

The lockdown has been eased a little bit. Odd things like selling houses and going fishing can start again. Yet for most of us little has changed and we're being told to use our common sense.

Those with a business were expected to welcome staff back to work on a Monday morning after the Sunday evening announcement. The paperwork for what they had to do when the workers turned up at work was only published two days later. Time to use your common sense it seems.

At our primary school today there was a very different mood amongst the staff. The task of getting things ready for six classes of fifteen children in three different year groups is huge. With a full school office of people working flat out together it might be possible. How to do it when people are separated and tired is an incredibly tricky conundrum.

The underlying issue is that there are more uncertainties than you can shake a stick at. We just don't know what to do next. It's becoming obvious that the government itself is making it all up as it goes along, just like the rest of us. In the end we all do our best. It is very hard to make any plans.

We are learning afresh to live each day as it comes. Jesus said some wise words about each day having enough trouble of its own so we shouldn't worry about what tomorrow might bring. Now is a time in which these words have never felt so real. We must trust in God and leave the future in His hands. He will hold us all as we pass through these days. We get through this with some prayer, using the common sense and patience that He gave us to triumph over uncertainty in all of its forms.