“How are you coping?” I think I have lost count of the number of times in the past two months that people have asked me that. And it usually comes with the follow-up: “You must be incredibly busy, covering two jobs now that you are the Acting Diocesan Bishop.”
I am deeply grateful for the concern and pastoral care that these comments demonstrate, and I will admit that, yes indeed, life is busy, and particularly so at the current time! However, in responding to those questions, I find I am repeatedly struck by three different thoughts:
Firstly, just how incredibly well supported I am by the colleagues and team around me – their work and their encouragement, sharing the load and partners with me in ministry.
And it’s not just my wonderful fellow Bishops and Church House colleagues, but also the clergy and lay people, parish by parish right across our diocese – their work and ministry, their support and encouragement.
I am particularly humbled each Sunday, as I take services out in the parishes and, week after week, I am named and supported in the prayers of intercession, as people stand with me and pray God’s blessing on me.
Secondly, when I am busy, I am forcibly reminded of my need not to look to my own strength, or to my energy, or wisdom or agenda, but to look to God: This is a key and repeated Biblical theme, seen most clearly perhaps in the wonderful verse in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.”
And my third thought – and again maybe this applies to all of us – is that perhaps I need to stop work and simply rest and chill a bit more.
If, in the busyness of life, I am giving a message of needing to be constantly on the go, constantly working, constantly charging from one task straight into the next one, then as well as being life-quenching when Jesus’ intention and gift is that I am called to live a life that’s abundant – life in all its fulness – I’m also living in a way that undermines and negates the Gospel I am called to declare and to live by.
It is God who provides, God who resources, and God who I am called to put my trust and dependence in, and not my own effort, hard work or achievements.
And, for me as Bishop and for each of us as disciples, I think that maybe the most powerful way we can declare the grace and power of God in our world and in our lives is if we simply learn afresh and live out what it is to enjoy life, to rest, to play, to have fun!
We are called and privileged to be “Children of God”, and, I think, perhaps the greatest defining characteristic of a child should simply that they know how to have fun – they know how to play!
So, whatever responsibilities you or I may hold, and whatever work may need to be done, may we nevertheless resolve to pause, to look up and look around in delighted wonder at the world around us, and then to step out and enjoy it.
In play, in rest, in recreation. In whatever it may be for you and for me that puts a smile on our face and enables us to live and to enjoy “life – life in all its fulness”.
With every blessing in Christ,
