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We have travelled a long way since March last year, and have not yet reached the Promised Land of a world safe from Covid infection. There have been low points on the journey: the frustrations of lockdown, people who have caught Covid or Long Covid, people who have died, people who have lost their jobs/ faced financial hardship, worries about schooling and childcare, and many others. There have been unexpected uplifting experiences: the quietness of the first lockdown, a new appreciation of the countryside around us, new contacts with neighbours and a revived sense of ‘community’, taking up or re-visiting hobbies and interests. We have learned a whole new vocabulary. We have seen health care, social care, public transport, retail and other key workers, and the contribution they make to our lives, in a new light. We have been grateful for the development and roll-out of the vaccine programme*. Over the coming weeks and months we will hopefully see the lifting of most, if not all legal restrictions, but we will not simply go back to life as it was in 2019. The virus is still about, and we will be encouraged to keep employing hand and other hygiene measures. There are people who lost loved ones, income, jobs, educational opportunities, who go forward with their losses. Some who shielded over the period, staying largely within the confines of their own home, are now very wary of going out and mixing with others. We probably all carry some kind of mental scar from our experience of living through the last 15 months, and need to acknowledge that. As we try to adjust to life without Covid-related restrictions, we have to be aware that we are going into a different world from the one we knew two years ago
*The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland teamed up with Christian Aid, inviting all who have received a double dose of the vaccine to express their thanks by making a financial donation to Christian Aid’s work of providing hygiene kits to people in Developing countries still waiting for vaccine rollout https://giving.give-star.com/online/christian-aid/cos-just-vaccine-rollout
Lord, thank you for the care and support given and received through the last fifteen months. Help us to remember that the pandemic is not yet over, the scars carried by many people in this country, and the situation for those in other countries – some of which are waiting for their vaccine rollout, some of whom lack access to hygiene and healthcare that we take for granted
PS In the light of potential easing of restrictions we are reviewing the future format of our online posts including Thought for the day. The current Thought for the day posts will finish today, and then we will bring the new format online after the summer