We have heard much use being made of the word 'unprecedented'. We have heard almost as much of 'returning to normal'. But is normality something we can recover or will it prove to be something never seen before?
We may harbour thoughts of 'normal' meaning stable, secure, peaceable, even cosy. But the terms of human existence are not like that. If we look back at our history 'normal' is likely to include wildfire, famine, flood, pestilence, earthquake, brigandry and a host of other events that make our existence quite likely to be, in Hobbes's words 'poor, nasty, brutish and short', Unless, that is, there is some kind of curb bringing order to society.
We have only to cast our minds back over the post-WW2 decades to see disquieting evidence of 'normality'. It is characterised by cold war, Korean war, Gulf wars, financial crash, melting ice-caps and so on. If we cast our minds further back we find the psalmist pondering life 'though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.' (Psalm 46) He offsets that with the words: 'God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.'
All very well, we may say. But we live in the digital age. We know more than the psalmist ever did. True, but have things changed all that much? Is human nature any different now from what it was in the Iron Age? When Julius Caesar left his calling card in Britannia after his brief cross-Channel foray, were attitudes all that much different from those in 1066, 1805 and 1940? We notice that during the Black Death in 1348 the reaction, the default position as it were, social distancing so-called, or shunning human contact, was the instinctive and best possible reaction then as now.
The psalmist was, of course, composing his poems before the days of Jesus. But even without that revelation he had a grip on the idea that there is meaning in the universe and a maker behind it. We could do worse than follow his example.
If you have a comment on this post please send in an email to Revd John King
Comments