Time

This morning, as I was driving into town, I noticed that the trees that border the main road are shrugging off their autumn leaves, exposing their winter bones. Time is marching on. Unfortunately, the pandemic is moving with it.

The other day, I was trying to work out when the coronavirus first started to impact our lives, and I couldn’t. The weeks are merging and blurring. It feels like we’ve been living this pandemic life forever.

Earlier today, after I’d completed an errand in town, I snuck into our church garden. I sat on the cold stone edge of the grotto, wrapped my cold hands around a takeaway cup of coffee, and thought about the last time we went to Mass.

It was a Friday morning. Soon after 6 am, phones began ringing across our parish, the word spreading quickly: Father will be celebrating one last Mass before the churches have to close. We gathered. We prayed. We received Jesus while we could. Then at the end of the Mass, tears flowed as I took one last look at the tabernacle before heading back out into the pandemic world.

That must have been at least six weeks ago. Last night, I counted up our Sunday offering envelopes. There are six of them waiting to be placed in the next collection basket. How many more will we add to the pile before the church doors open once again for Sunday Mass?

I placed my empty coffee cup on the ground and then faced the tabernacle end of the church and prayed.

Later, as I drove along the narrow road that leads into our village, I could see a mobile set of traffic lights ahead of me. The green light was shining so I moved over into the wrong lane and drove past the roadworks that are obstructing one side of the road. Around a few bends, and then I passed the matching set of lights and the cars waiting behind it for their turn to use the road.

The roadworks have been at the entrance to our village for a long time. I’ve forgotten exactly when they began. Before the pandemic, I think. It’s hard to remember. As well as the traffic lights, there are two large machines, including one that has been chipping away at the rock that rises high on both sides of the road. It’s enlarging the ditch that has, over the years, tipped careless drivers into the cutting. We can see drainage pipes at the bottom of the ditch. They’ll carry away the water that floods down the road whenever it rains. If it rains. And if the roadworks are ever finished.

Whenever we drive in and out of our village, and come to the traffic lights, we always say, “I bet the pandemic will be over before the roadworks are finished.”

Yesterday, my husband Andy told me he had bought some avocados. “They’re rather hard. You’ll have to wait a while to eat them.”

”Will they be ripe before the pandemic is over?” I asked with a grin.

The avocados will ripen. The roadworks will disappear. Time will toss off the pandemic. And the church doors will reopen.

Nothing stays the same forever.

Except for God who waits through time.

My Love waits. Inside the church, He waits for me.

Photo by Julia Solonina on Unsplash