The world is in crisis.  It has been for some time, but we have all been too busy to really notice.  Maybe we have noticed big obvious things like climate change, or obscene rates of top pay, or housing crisis, but there is so much that is deeply wrong that we have simply not observed it.

Covid19 has given us the time to look.  Covid19 has shone a spotlight on so many wrongs, intensifying their effect.  It is like a biopsy, and unfortunately the results are not looking good.  There are of course many signs of good health, but we need to look for the cancer.  Within the UK we see

• hypocritical and untrustworthy government
• under-equipped NHS
• gross inequality
• institutional racism – reflected in the higher rates of death among BAME people
• the availability of money to pay for things that we deem important

Many of these are seen in more exaggerated forms in the US.

But  we are not yet focusing on the global wrongs.  You need to look beyond the normal media news outlets to hear what is happening in majority world countries; across Africa, India, Pakistan…  In these countries the lockdown is causing more deaths and fear than the virus itself.

What does the world need to do?  What do each of us as individuals need to do? There are 5 steps:

1. We need to recognise what’s wrong – Covid is helping us do that.
2. We need to take responsibility for it, to own the part that our behaviour has played in it.
3. We need to repent of that behaviour.  To commit that we will apply our energy to changing our behaviour.
4. We need to receive forgiveness for what we have done and cannot change, to liberate us to make a new start.  In the same way that the priest flooded Jean Valjean with gifts and forgiveness in Les Miserables, so Jesus Christ has flooded us with the gift of God’s love and forgiveness.  We need to accept this gift to empower us with the determination to live changed lifes.
5. We need to live out our new commitments

It may all seem daunting, we are just one among billions.  But we are not called to be the Cathedral of Love, but to be individual stones in that cathedral.  We each have our part to play in the great and glorious endeavour.

Be blessed, and a blessing.