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The complexity of the season - Bishop Lee writes
Little did I know that when I first wrote about my cycling accident and began reflecting on it in the light of the opening to Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 - To everything there is a season - how that season would develop and be subsumed into the Covid-19 pandemic.
As I write, I am on the threshold of being formally signed ‘back on’; sufficiently healed in body for a phased return to my duties in the diocese. In mid-March, x-rays showed that my bones had healed well enough to begin weight-bearing and since then I have made slow but steady progress to be able to walk again.
I know that self-discipline in relation to a multitude of exercises prescribed by my physiotherapist has been fundamental to this. That said, I have also been acutely aware of being held in prayer by so many over such a protracted period. I am truly grateful to you for this, and it has made all the difference.
Without saying too much at this point, I have really struggled with my personal season. As I outlined in a previous posting, the wise counsel of two people in particular helped me to ‘lean in’ to my need simply to rest – and I did this. They encouraged me to see this season as one of ‘lying fallow’.
Yet as someone with a natural tendency to look on the positive side, I have also had to own that lying fallow has often felt like being in the wilderness and struggled to find any sense of gift in it. Nevertheless, the conviction I had as I was being treated by the paramedics, that God would use what had happened to bless, has been coming back into my consciousness.
I have sensed that my experience of being confined to a single room for over two months offers some insights which may resonate with others and perhaps serve them in these testing times. I now need to turn these into bite-sized reflections and hope this piece will not only act as an introduction to those but a driver for me delivering them. The first piece will be entitled ‘Sacred space’.
Bishop Lee
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