Last Saturday, while Tress and I were having our usual weekend brekky, I set up a link to an online “meeting” for later in the day. We were to “meet” and sing the birthday song for my mum.
Like all video conferencing, the virtual birthday gathering delivered the usual hitches. When we finally connected everyone, mum sounded excited, and did most of the talking. I was contented to just look at the screen and listen. We eventually got to the singing part, and Daniel then said a prayer for her.
Earlier in that morning, Tress and I had pottered around outside. She did loads of weeding and I trimmed some hedges, pruned back the Japanese maple next to the shed, and tried to fix some edging timber that had come loose. We then cleaned up and headed out for our weekly grocery shopping, which turned out to be the only time we got into the car the whole week and a bit.
Later on Saturday evening, I cooked us a dinner of tofu and pork mince, which turned out to be a tad too much food so there was leftovers.
St Alf’s the next day was again via online delivery but this time Peter interviewed a couple of young ladies from the evening service. That was a silver lining as those interviewees were people we might otherwise never know. Deb talked about mental health and Amy, right at the end of the service, talked about her work as an ICU nurse at the Austin. She had also just been engaged to her boyfriend so it was a warm, feel good end. Earlier, Mark Simon had talked about Psalm 40, about being honest with our thoughts and feelings at this time, and about God being there for us.
Later in the arvo, I cooked us lunch, using some leftovers from the night before and making a nostalgic rice porridge to go with it, as well as some fried cabbage. Somehow, it worked. I then took the little fellow for his walk. After some tele viewing I cooked again, this time some meat sauce for our planned pasta lunches for the a couple of days this week.
We ended our covid’ed weekend watching the warm fuzzy MasterChef. It continues to feel strange and I guess like just about everyone else, I wondered when life can return to pre-viral days. I can perhaps guess what bits of those days I’d embrace again and which bits I’d be twitchy about. I guess the constant is God being there right through. Like other less than palatable episodes of my life so far, it feels like Jesus is sleeping while the winds attack the boat like a battering ram. I guess it matters more, that he’s in the boat.
Ante 