#Lockdown Pilgrimage - 1st Sunday After Lent

 Today's destination? St. John's Church Coltishall.



The doors remain shut. We are left out in the wilderness  Not a bad place to be on a Sunday on which the Gospel leads us to reflect on Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness’.  Wandering among the graves I was suddenly with Jesus in a lonely place, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee! Remember the pigs running down into the sea and drowning ( Matthew 8) ? 

Jesus had come apart to find some space for himself. There he meets a seriously deranged person living naked among the graves. Cut a long story short, and the bloke is healed and ends up,”clothed and in his right mind!”

What got me into the Gadereane Swine story as coming across the grave of pig farming friends of mine. It was not Geoff’s favorite story! I remember a time we had joked about it on the occasion of his pigs being spooked by a hot-air balloon. It was at least ten days before he herded them all up again!   Geoff  loved his pigs and all other living creatures!  Which, in a roundabout way, is what got me back to Jesus Temptation in the Wilderness, Lent and the serious business of preparing for Holy Week and Easter.

In the Desert of the Temptation there were living creatures and angels, just as there had been in Eziekel's (Chapter 1)  vision of heaven. There is a beauty in the wilderness and deserted places that might almost be heavenly. The desert is a place where God can come close.  There was certainly beauty enough in my wilderness where I walked, like the man in the pig story, between the graves.


In advance of  Holy Week these Snowdrops are already singing Easter Hymns. Singing Easter Hymns and, because Snowdrops are also called Candlemas Bells,  reminding Simeon here (that's me) of the challenge of singing the Nunc Dimittis when my time comes!  
That Jesus? He's  the "light to lighten us Gentiles". And yes, "the light shines in the darkness and has not overcome it." And, yes, "as in Adam all die so in Christ shall all be made alive." 
"I am saved, I am being saved. I hope to be saved."
Just doing what the man said, considering the flowers. There might have been angels ministering to me, I certainly feel the benefit. Somehow, " clothed and in my right mind!"


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