I recently spoke with a good friend who has been a pastor for many years both in this country and abroad. He is now retired but still actively involved in a church and he told me about an article he wrote for his church newsletter in which he reflects on the crisis caused by the pandemic. He has kindly given me permission to reproduce it here with some light editing. I will post it in three parts, the first follows...

Back at the end of March - which seems like a long time ago now - I drew attention to our online resources page in this blog post. Since then, I have added some further recommended resources. There is a wealth of good spiritually sound teaching available on the internet, though we also need to be aware that there is also a vast quantity of error, deceit and harmful material online...

You can learn a lot about yourself by thinking about your priorities in life. Ask yourself some questions. What counts with you, what matters most to you? What would you choose to take with you if you were going to be stranded on Radio 4's desert island? How do you choose to spend your free time or any spare money? Our priorities may not lie in material things but perhaps in the joy of family life, or a hobby, or a good book or the pursuit of happiness, peace or satisfaction, however we think they may be found...

I received news this week from a former colleague who is a pastor of a church and a university professor in the Czech Republic. He wrote that he had been invited to speak on local radio and gave this brief but thought-provoking account of the interview, which is reproduced here with his permission. "They asked me what I think the world will be like when everything goes back to normal. I said the world has not been normal before, in fact, it has never been normal...

We have so many questions that, at the moment, are without an answer. How long will the pandemic last; how many people will fall ill or die before it is over; will we keep seeing waves of infection or will we be able to get it under control; will a cure or a vaccine be found? Governments are struggling to deal with circumstances beyond any experience and trying to manage a situation of incomprehensible magnitude. We all have many questions about what we can and can't do, who we can see, where we can go, what is permissible and what is not...