The Path Through

Do you ever look back on what happened a few years ago, and it all seems so unreal?

Sometimes I have these moments of reflection, where it’s like, did that really happen?

Did we really spend our lives at home, told by the government that we couldn’t leave our homes? Were we really threatened with a needle to do basic things like pay a bill at the Post Office, or go on a bus? (Italy)

And some people were okay with it, and others were really not, and there was a division as great as the grand canyon, and then everyone just started carrying on as normal as if it never happened.

There’s a machine at the post office where I go and you press a button to take a ticket and wait. It’s kind of strange because even if you are the only person in the Post Office you still have to take a ticket. Like they need to monitor how many people come in and for what purpose.

It used to be just a small gathering of people and you’d ask who came in last, and find your place in the queue.

Now it’s all electronic.

This machine used to be one where you’d scan your ‘Green Pass’ to get seen at the Post Office.

So it always seems a bit foreboding to me because I know that in a split second, they could just reactivate the Green Pass requirement.

A friend in Italy told me how she couldn’t get served even by people she’d known for twenty years who worked at the Post Office, and I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t just make an exception for her, until she explained about the machine.

One thing I love about Italy is the flexibility, especially after coming her after nine years in Switzerland. For example, when we first moved here we didn’t realise that you couldn’t buy bus tickets on the bus. The driver waited for us while we went to the newsagent to buy them and get back on.

Kindness, flexibility.

But the machine.

It is not kind or flexible.

It’s funny how when we were stuck in lockdown, trying to juggle homeschooling and homeworking and everything else, that there was a lot going on in the field of machine building.

Out here in the countryside, I don’t think about the machines much these days.

But this morning, I went to a cafe in the city, where I paid with cash, but I had to put my note into a machine that spat out change.

Slowly, slowly, the personal is being replaced with the machine, the flexibility is being lost.

Until next time.

Someone’s sounding the alarm about the next time, the next pandemic, the next global emergency, the next disaster.

I don’t pay much attention these days to be honest. Because I trust that God will show me the path through.

And why think of the darkness when there’s still a chink of light?

I try to live as much as possible by this Bible verse,

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.’ - Matthew 6:34.

24 hours to be concerned about is enough.

But now and then something will tug at my attention, reminding me, that there were those days, that weren’t normal, they weren’t normal at all, when the darkness was on full display, though some believed it was light, because ‘Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light.’

The healthcare system is like a fallen angel, beautiful in appearance on the surface, horrendous in its ability to steal, kill and destroy.

And if they did it once, they’ll do it again, whether it’s in our lifetime or our children’s lifetime.

Who am I kidding? Do we really have that much time left? Given the way things are going.

I put my trust in the most High.

And I had a dream. In the dream there was a city on one side, and the wilderness on the other side. And in the middle there was a narrow river. And I was in a boat that was travelling through. And the message I got from the dream was to be in-between; the city with all its technology, and the wilderness.

The path is narrow. I pray you find it.