A reflection from Dr John Caroe

None of us have experienced anything like this before.

The nation’s mood must be an echo of 1939 when such a vast threat hung over our very existence. It’s now a different war, on several fronts.

We are on the exponential upward curve of the statistics of Covid19. Our supermarkets are seeing the fruit of the battle against fear, reflected also by the evidence of the FTSE’s landslide. Then on top of all this each one of us is sensing the bereavement from regular face to face friendship and the real challenge of facing ‘ME’, the real inner self, unable any longer to shelter behind the fig leaf of daily activities.

We have no choice: we as individuals and as a community are entering a dark night of the soul. Perhaps we are being challenged, or even chastened? Is this what it means to be pruned?

The mystics tell us that the way up to God is the way down, down into the darkness of unknowing, of insecurity. It involves a stripping of temporary securities and a search for what is really real. It is process that cannot be controlled by our cerebral cortices: it can only be a gradual spiritual revelation that dawns though the vacuum of our own emptiness, or dare we say our nakedness?

Let us be certain of the most basic, most absolute eternal truth. Each one of us is loved, deeply loved. This is not only an external fact for all mankind, it is on offer as a deep internal rock for each of us who have been touched and warmed by the intimacy of Jesus.

Christ is in us, the hope of glory. In these coming months let us absorb Paul’s ringing declaration:

“I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

Dr John Caroe, Retired GP, part-time Chaplain and Chair of Trustees of PRIME.

www.prime-international.org