Endurance, resilience and perseverance are vital to life. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, and ‘quick fixes’ are rarely successful in the long term.

At this time, it can be hard to keep carrying on. Whether we’re still working and feeling fearful, exhausted and perhaps taken for granted or not working and feeling useless, anxious and bored, the urge to give up is always present. Life, at the moment, may feel like a trudge rather than a race; we may feel bogged down and weighed down by burdens and pressures over which we have little or no control. Energy and enthusiasm may well have slipped away like water seeping slowly from a cracked pot. We may feel our feet dragging and our heads drooping.

How do we carry on when we feel we can’t go another step? How do we find the strength and motivation to keep going? The urge to stay in bed and pull the covers over us may feel so tempting right now.

For all of us at some point we will run out of steam. Our own strength, personality and will can only take us so far. Christians, however, don’t have to rely on their own strength, personality and will to get by. Instead, we have access to the presence and power of God.

1 Pet 5:10 says, “the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”

Strong. Firm. Steadfast. Immovable.

I’m reminded of the folk song, used by slaves in America and political activists in the UK, which has as its chorus the repeated refrain, “We shall not, we shall not be moved.”

Perhaps standing strong like the tree by the river (mentioned in the song) is just as important as moving on. Perhaps being steadfast and standing firm is all we can do right now. But, as God’s word reminds us, that’s a hugely important thing to do. “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you.” (1 Cor 15:58)

We don’t stand in our own strength, but in God’s. (Eph 6:10-17) We don’t endure because we’re strong, but because He restores us. He enables us to carry on.

No matter how we feel, if we stand in His strength, we will find the grace to carry on. He won’t let us stumble and fall. He will restore us. “By the grace of God I can carry on.” (‘Forever’, Chris Tomlin)

Friday 8th May is VE Day, the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. It’s important we remember and commemorate historical events like this and tonight we looked at some of the reasons why, including what life was like in those days. We might grumble about 41 days in lockdown, but the Second World War lasted from 1st September 1939 until 8th May 1945. We might chafe at queuing to buy food, but food was rationed then (the picture is a week’s rations for 1 adult.)

In the Bible, there are many times when God’s people were urged to remember who He was and what He had done. Tonight, we looked at Joshua 3 and 4, when God enabled His people to cross the River Jordan on dry land and were urged to take memorial stones from the river to commemorate this miraculous intervention. Stones were often used to build altars (see Gen 26:23-25, Gen 35:14, 1 Sam 7:12); they were a visible reminder to future generations of what God had done.

Ps 78:4 says, ‘we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done.’ Our job is not only to remember and commemorate what God has done, but to pass these facts on to others. We as a church are celebrating 10 years in the building at Market Street, remembering God’s miraculous provision (how a church with just over £7,500 in the bank took possession of a building costing £170,000 and how God’s provision continues to this day – if you want to know more about this, read ‘How We Got Here’ on the church website under ‘Blog.‘) When we’re allowed to gather again, we hope to have a celebration day to commemorate this! But each of us have stories to tell – individual stories, family stories, church stories – which we need to commemorate and pass on.

What will our memorial stones look like? They might be actual stones (gathered from our gardens or walks and painted perhaps); they might be craft activities done in lockdown or journals kept to remind us of these times. When we look back on these in years to come, people can say, ‘I did this at a time when we were forced to stay at home, when we couldn’t go to the church building as usual’… but how much better if we can also combine this with something that says ‘… and even then God helped us; God provided for us; God cared for us.’  Because God surely does help us, provide for us, care for us and lead us forward, now as He did in 1945, as He did in Joshua’s time. God is there, always working for good, and we need to remember and commemorate this… and tell others!

After the magnificent news of the resurrection at Easter, you would have expected the disciples to be so thrilled by their encounters with the risen Lord that they would have been quickly transformed into vibrant witnesses. Instead, we find a strange silence lingering after Easter Sunday; the disciples were still indoors a week later (John 20:26), not making any visible impact on their society but still huddled in fear. Then, when Jesus next meets them (John 21:1-22), we find them fishing – not for men, but for fish. They returned to the familiar, to their old professions, to what life was like before they had met Jesus. It’s as if Easter had never happened.

We may wonder how they could have forgotten so quickly how their lives had been transformed by Jesus or how they now forgot their calling and commission, but Jesus came to them not with condemnation but with questions that reminded them of the core of their faith: love for Him. Three times He asked Simon Peter if he loved Him, effectively saying, ‘Do you love me more than the old way of life, the old routines, the way you used to live and think and act? Am I more important to you than your career, your job, your friends, your personal ambitions? Am I more important than making money? Am I more important than the things of this world? Do you love me? Am I truly number one in your life?’

This is the crux of the matter. Jesus had new things for Peter to do – to feed His lambs, care for His sheep and minister to others in His name – and as we turn to the book of Acts, we see Peter doing exactly that, filled with fire and passion after the Day of Pentecost and serving Jesus even to the point of death himself. He learned to put Jesus first, not to fret about what others would do (John 21:20-21) and to serve Jesus faithfully, living out His love throughy sacrificial service. That’s what we are called to do too.

These are strange times for us; lockdown is not what many of us have experienced before, although we should perhaps remember that for the chronically ill and elderly, perhaps little has changed in their daily routines. Most of us, however, find this period completely unfamiliar: the normality of work and school routines has gone; the normality of seeing friends and family has been disrupted; the normality of being able to go where you want when you want and do whatever you want has been severely impacted. Even the normality of church life has been shaken, for online services, however helpful, are not the same as the ‘real thing’! For most of us, this has meant much adjustment and the creation of a ‘new’ normality, or new routines.

We may be struggling to do this and struggling to know how to adapt, but people are hugely resourceful and creative, and most of us are adapting in many ways. We find in the Bible that this is not as unprecedented as we feel it is and can garner tips from people there as to how to live in abnormal normality.

Noah and his family lived in lockdown on the ark, with rain pouring down for forty days and forty nights and animals everywhere. I doubt that can have been a peaceful existence and yet they emerged with thanksgiving and praise.

The Israelites came from the relentless work schedule of Egypt into the wilderness where they moved at God’s command, never quite knowing whether they would stay in a place for a day or for months. They gathered manna for food, rather than enjoying a wider range of food they had known in Egypt, and it must have seemed an endless journey to them.

Later, God’s people would live in exile, far away from the temple and feeling mournful for all they had left behind. But in each of these situations, God’s people survived, with new routines, new food and new practices, because they learned to trust God with them through it all.

God’s presence with us is the constant in our abnormal circumstances and as He guides us through to some kind of  new ‘usual’, we can have hope, strength, comfort and peace because of His never-changing nature and unfailing love.

Through it all you are faithful
Through it all you are strong
As we walk through the shadows
Still You shine on. (‘Through It All’, Matt Redman) 

I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about how we respond to unusual situations, about our need for control and routine and about how we all respond differently to the same external circumstances. A popular phrase going around has been “we’re not all in the same boat, but we’re all in the same storm”, reflecting the truth that each of us will be facing the same lockdown, but our different personalities and personal circumstances will vary, affecting how we respond.

The disruption to our normal routines, habits and way of life has brought positives as well as negatives for most of us, and we have worked hard at identifying these –  a change of pace, more time with family members in some cases, the opportunity to spend time with God and in His wonderful creation, for example. But the loss of so much much which we value – financial stability, time with our extended family and friends, the purpose gained from employment, the security of our former lives – has left us disoriented and perhaps also feeling fearful, uncertain, unable to plan ahead. It’s not surprising that we feel cast adrift in a storm at times. We have worked hard at adapting – Zoom meetings for church and work, online ways of maintaining hobbies and seeing friends and family – but the pace of change has been so swift that much of the day feels like we’re on a roller coaster or suffering from motion sickness.

In science, we are told that there must be a ‘constant’ in experiments so we can evaluate our results accurately. For believers, the only constant we truly have – at any time, not simply now – is God. He does not change like the shifting shadows (James 1:17) He is faithful and true in all His ways. He becomes the anchor for every boat in this storm.

That’s not to say He is like a genie in a bottle, there to grant us our every wish. He is no vaccine against pain, suffering and sorrow. But He is the constant who can hold us steady in every situation and who will never leave us or forsake us. (Listen to ‘The Constant’ by Worship Central here).

After weeks of heartening sunshine, April showers have finally arrived and our skies are overcast and cloudy at present.

Sunshine can be a powerful restorative, bathing our surroundings in light, and many people are powerfully affected by the weather and the amount of sunshine we can see. Moods are often lifted by sunny, bright skies, and even lockdown seemed more bearable when there were blue skies overhead!

John tells us that Jesus is the Light of the world (John 8:32) and that ‘in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.’ (John 1:4) No matter what darkness – physical or spiritual – which surrounds us, ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ (John 1:5) God is himself light and in him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)

We have John 1:5 printed in the foyer of our church building alongside a painting representing blazing light. This light is not just the tremulous flickering of a candle; it is the scorching, blazing, brilliant light which can never be extinguished.

I once visited Malta in March to celebrate my 50th birthday, leaving clouds and drizzle in the UK to arrive to blazing, dazzling sunshine that made me squint and blink. I’d never seen sunshine that bright in March in my life. The light of Jesus is so much brighter.

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We may feel we are living through dark and difficult times, the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ of pandemic that perhaps we’ve only read about in history books. We may feel that death and doom have the upper hand at present. But the truth is the light is still shining in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Jesus will not be snuffed out. Light will not be conquered. It cannot and will not be quenched. Because of that, we can hope.