Message from Tim

Through the wilderness 

‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously!’ That was the song that Miriam taught her brother Moses and the people of Israel after they safely crossed the Red Sea, and they danced and sang, accompanied by Miriam on the tambourine. They were out of Egypt! The Egyptian army, intent on pursuing and recapturing them, had been destroyed. They were finally free! Looking back, they could celebrate God’s deliverance.

Looking forward, though, that was another matter entirely, because they were still on the shores of the Red Sea. Between them and the Promised Land lay the wilderness, and in the Promised Land were the fearsome tribes of Canaan. They had a long way to go, both in terms of getting there and in terms of learning to trust God on the way. They had left Egypt behind, but they had not yet entered Canaan, and as such, they were entering a period of transition, but it was a time when they would meet with God.

A few years ago now, in the Pub Group, we spent some time looking at Richard Rohr’s book, Adam’s Return. He uses the phrase ‘liminal space’ to describe ‘when we are betwixt and between, have left one room and not yet entered the next room…It is that graced time when we are not certain or in control, when something genuinely new can happen’ (p. 135). He says that, ‘liminal space will almost always feel counterintuitive, like a waste of time and not logical or rational at all. In fact, it must break your sense of practicality and function and move you into the non-functional world for a time’ (p.137). But that space, that break from the routine of business as usual gives God the opportunity to meet with us, change us, and teach us something new.

As a fellowship, we are in a state of liminality at the moment. We have been told we can return to our place of worship, but we are not able to get back to 10:30 on Sunday mornings as they used to happen. It is taking time to figure out what we should be doing, how we should be doing it, and whether we can do it safely, so for the time being we are still not meeting together, but this is not a waste of time in God’s sight. It is a time for each of us to think, and pray and connect with God in new ways, so that when we come out of our liminal space, we may find that our faith looks and feels a bit different, and that we have changed as well, but that God has stayed gracious and faithful in all his dealings with us.

If you are a church member, I hope you will join us via Zoom on Wednesday (15th July) so that we can explore the way ahead together, but in the meantime, can I leave you with this prayer, adapted from The Book of Common Worship:

Great God, you are one God,
and you bring together what is scattered
and mend what is broken.
Bind up all our wounds,
and heal us in spirit,
that we may be renewed as disciples of Jesus Christ,
our Master and Saviour.
Amen.