in this time

Bruce Cockburn has a way with words. His 1996 song "Pacing the Cage" seems so appropriate for this season of COVID-19. Here are some of the lyrics:

Sunset is an angel weeping

Holding out a bloody sword

No matter how I squint I cannot

Make out what it’s pointing toward

Sometimes you feel like you live too long

Days drip slowly on the page

You catch yourself

Pacing the cage

 

Sometimes the best map will not guide you

You can’t see what’s round the bend

Sometimes the road leads through dark places

Sometimes the darkness is your friend

Today these eyes scan bleached-out land

For the coming of the outbound stage 

Pacing the cage

While sometimes we feel like we are restricted and some may even feel like they are “pacing the cage” at times, I think this season has also been for many, something of the slow work of grace.

Yes, we feel tired, weary, at times even exhausted. Cooped up, starved for social and physical contact, daydreaming about going out to a restaurant or a concert, anxious about politics, climate change, the economy …

And yet, somehow, in the midst of all this, we can know grace.

We have a sign on our fridge that says: “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” It’s infallible, in part because we can’t manufacture it. It’s an echo of God’s own delight in creation. It reminds us that God is at work in and through us and all around us, bubbling like yeast beneath the surface, even as we’re wondering what's happening and what will happen. 

We look around us and things are not as we would like them to be. It's easy to get sucked in and feel miserable - and sometimes we do. But, at the same time, God breaks in, cracks open parts of our lives so we can experience a little of his joy. To quote another Cockburn song, the world is full of “rumors of glory.”