Abiding

 

For the first time in a YEAR, I was in a church today. I was there with twenty others, registered and masked, to pray for and mark the life of a dear, very private woman, a loved member of our Thursday Bible study group. It was a Requiem Mass in the tiny Roman Catholic church, and most of us there were protestants. The music was pre-recorded, sung beautifully by her niece, and the cross was shrouded in a purple veil.

It is, after all, Holy Week.

I grew up in an Episcopal church, so seeing the cross veiled, and the palm crosses at the door of the church, took me back. When Abide with Me was played as the coffin was carried out, I was taken back again, to the funeral of my dear dad, over ten years ago now. It was one of his favourites.

There are problems all around, it seems. Our internet is playing up, temperamentally being on sometimes, and then, stubbornly, giving us no connection. Totally unreliable. Fixing it isn’t straight-forward, and meanwhile there are two people here relying on the connection for their livelihoods, and others relying on it for other reasons. Tensions mount.

But for a blissful hour, I sat, stood, listened and prayed. I thought of Elizabeth, and thanked God for her. I basked in the presence of the other 19 in the church. I’ve only seen most of them on Zoom, for a whole year. So good to be gathered together.

Abide, the song advised. Abide with me, Jesus said. In the midst of the pandemic debacle, in the midst of private insecurities and constantly-changing vistas, in the midst of griefs and anxieties and sorrows and loss, we sat together for an hour, abiding. Abiding in Jesus.

Come, he said, and I will refresh you.

Mary sat at Jesus’ feet while Martha wore herself out. Help me, Lord, to choose the important over  the urgent, every time, and to choose to abide.