Space - Penny Snowden

In these last few months the concept of space has come to the fore. Quite suddenly we found ourselves in lockdown and our sense of identity and purpose became something that came into focus.

Our normal business floated away and we were left with space in its stead. Space can be two-edged. There’s a popular children’s book called squished and squashed. In this story a woman goes to see a wise man - why it is always the woman consulting the man is beyond me but that’s a quite different reflection!

Back to the story; the woman finds that she is squished and squashed in her cottage and needs more space. What to do? Well the wise man tells her to bring into her cottage her hen, her goat and her cow and pig. Well you can imagine it makes the situation far worse as mayhem ensues.

So the woman goes back to the wise man in despair. His solution was to remove the livestock and this she did with the result that she realised how much space she really had all along and found herself at peace at last. So I imagine the moral of the story is to be satisfied with what we’ve got.

What do we do with this extra room in our lives? The space we have gained due to the pandemic can be a negative - the worry about the future, the people we love, all real issues that cause concern.

But we can find positives too. We have been given precious time to see things more clearly, to look around us and really see the beauty of God’s creation and as we take our walks use that time for contemplation. Rhian has given us many ideas for writing journals or painting and now we are celebrating harvest too which reminds us of the continuous bounty of God.

We have the space to just be and perhaps to evaluate what is important in our lives and it might just be as simple as these three teachings of St David:

Keep the faith

Be joyful

Do the little things

Prayer for this day and every day:

Father, help me to live this day to the full,

 being true to You, in every way.

Jesus, help me to give myself away to others,

 being kind to everyone I meet.

Spirit, help me to love the lost,

 proclaiming Christ in all I do and say.

Amen.