St Johns with St Barnabas

I am sat down writing this still surrounded by Easter Eggs. Not one or two, but a small cheerful collection, foil glinting in the light, quietly insisting on being eaten. I keep thinking I really must ration them, make them last ….. though experience suggests otherwise.

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We could say this is a kind of ‘in between’ moment; Easter has happened, and like the disciples we are left waiting for the Ascension and Pentecost.

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As a family, we enjoyed a wonderful Easter celebration both at church and at home because it was also my Grandsons 18th birthday. Nevertheless, here we are after it all, waiting. My Grandson has his A levels shortly, then there is the long wait for his results, and then …., can he get into his preferred university? Hopefully there will still be a few chocolate eggs looking out at me from the sideboard!

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This is where May so often finds us, as it did the first disciples. After the astonishment of Easter and the mystery of Ascension, they were left waiting. No dramatic signs, just the instruction to stay together and wait for what had been promised. I imagine it didn’t sound particularly spiritual.

This is where God so often works, not only in the grand moments, but in the quiet spaces that follow them. My uneaten eggs remind me not to try and hurry on too quickly from Easter as though it where a single day to be packed away with the decorations, but to let it remain with us, to live in the light of the Risen Lord, even if we are not quite sure what comes next.

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Pentecost will come as it always does, full, of movement, energy and breath. But it does not come because the disciples made it happen.

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It comes because they stayed together, stayed expectant. Stayed in the ‘in-between’. So, this May, whether you find yourself waiting for something clear, or simply living through days that feel gently uneventful, perhaps that is enough. Enough to sit where you are, enough to trust that even now, something is quietly unfolding.

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And in the meantime, there is always another Easter Egg, unless of course you have managed to eat them all!