'Microbes not Missiles'

Two funerals today: one at the crematorium, the other at Christ Church in town, followed by burial in a remote country churchyard, where I have never been before! It will be interesting to see how 'social distancing' works on the these occasions - how much it is observed. Fortunately, both funerals are likely to be fairly small occasions. Wednesday's will be a very different story!...

It was so encouraging yesterday to see and hear so many inventive ways churches managed still to church. We are learning a whole new skill-set, and people are clearly appreciating it. Our 35 minute recording from Christ Church alone had over 70 'hits', and we know several of those were watched by couples and family members. (If you want to watch/listen - including my reflection about my own mother, and a short exposition of Colossians 3, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/uAUhagjV_V8. We haven't yet mastered the skill of live streaming, but we're getting there.)  Although there are many challenges to learning new technical skills, this season will improve our communications for the longer term. I really applaud the 'have a go' attitude of so many people, not being afraid to make mistakes, realising the importance of keeping in touch and (for Christians) sharing the message of God's love and encouraging each other.

There has been much said about being on a 'war footing', and the WW2 spirit being invoked. Certainly, we are being drawn together in a common cause to resist the 'attack' of the virus and to protect and help one another, especially the most vulnerable. The difficulty is that this enemy is not external but internal, and unknowingly, unless we do as we are told (i.e. social distancing, cleansing etc), we risk becoming 'enemy agents' ourselves and carrying the microbes with us. For this reason, we have agreed to desist from meeting physically as a Hub Team, following our meeting last night, but to learn the technology of video conferencing. This week's challenge!

With amazing prescience, Microsoft entrepreneur Bill Gates predicted what we are now facing 5 years ago: this TED talk is well worth watching. It's only just over 8 minutes long:  https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready. In 2015, he said that the next global challenge would not be military warfare but a pandemic: 'not missiles but microbes.'  Sad to think we could have prepared so much better, if we had learned the lessons of ebola.

I'll continue tomorrow, I think, on this theme of fighting the enemy. Meanwhile, here is yesterday's Mothers' Day prayer:

God of love, passionate and strong, tender and careful,   

watch over us and hold us all the days of our life;         

 through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.