Nowhere…. Now-here

Yesterday I was musing on:

There’s a place for us
A time and a place for us
Peace and quiet and open air….Somewhere

Apart from the Covid news… Yesterday a friend was sitting with Aunt Michelle who is very sick with cancer; I was speaking to another friend about Ben whose wife has just died; and I have one brother in hospital having had major surgery and another who is continuing treatment for his cancer….

Somewhere – a place of love, trust and hope?…. some would say ‘Nowhere’!

Brennan Manning points out that ‘nowhere’ is also ‘now-here’. We escape from the apparent impossibilities of the vast ‘nowhere’; we take on a fresh perspective appreciating the present, the here and now, the now-here.  

Having raised nearly £33m for NHS charities Captain Sir Tom Moore is working with Age UK in a national campaign to tackle loneliness among older people. Their message? We all can help the 225,000 older people who typically go for a week without speaking to anyone. Captain Tom, the 100 year old war veteran, is living in the now-here.

Julia Jackson, the mother of Jacob Blake, the man left paralysed after being shot several times in the back by American police gave a powerful speech a month ago:

‘As I pray for my son’s healing physically and emotionally and spiritually, I also have been praying, even before this, for the healing of our country.’

Many would look at the shooting and say God is nowhere; Julia Jackson says that he is now-here.

I’m musing on Paul’s words in Romans 8: ‘For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship…’He was explaining to Christians in Rome that they did not to be fear-full. God, their active, caring father for them was not nowhere; he was now-here.