Last night Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that it is essential for all of us to stay home in order to save lives; we have all now been enlisted in the fight against this invisible enemy. At the time that news of the spread of Coronavirus was beginning to impinge vaguely on our consciousness (it was, after all, happening far away in a city most of us had never heard of), at Emmaus Road we were in the process of exploring a book by John Mark Comer, pastor of Bridgetown church in Portland Oregon. The book was The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. 

Little did we imagine that within a few weeks, for most of us (although not if you work in the NHS), the ruthless elimination of hurry would have become Government policy. Furthermore, the police now have the power to enforce several ‘spiritual practices’ which were quite new to many of us sitting in the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre on a Sunday morning in February! Whilst friends embraced as fireworks lit up the skies at the birth of this new decade less than four months ago, who could have imagined that before the clocks sprung forward to welcome British Summer Time, solitude would have become the new norm in Britain? Now, from this morning, retail is no longer an option – either as therapy or entertainment! Simplicity has been mandated by law! 
 
These are strange times indeed. We cannot do many of the things we have taken for granted all our lives – even things our parents and grandparents were free to do during the two world wars of the 20th Century. A ‘quiet and peaceable life’ – something that is beginning to look a lot like a cloistered monastic way of life – is what we are being invited by our government to willingly embrace in order to save lives. 
 
Two thousand years ago the Apostle Paul wrote to tell a young church leader named Timothy that to lead “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity… is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:2-4)
 
It may just be that it is in peace and quietness that we will all be saved. All we can do is stand and wait.
 
John Milton’s Sonnet 19, also known by its first line, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent is a poem by a middle-aged writer and translator in the 1650s coming to terms with the fact that he is now blind and can no longer do everything he once did. He realises in his confinement that God doesn’t need either his work or his gifts, only his willingness to serve. Milton later went on, whilst still blind, to write Paradise Lost, probably the greatest poem ever written in the English language.
 
When I consider how my light is spent, 
   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 
   And that one Talent which is death to hide 
   Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent 
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
   My true account, lest he returning chide; 
   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” 
   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent 
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need 
   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best 
   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 
   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: 
   They also serve who only stand and wait.”
 

​

Chris Denne