The Israelites: desert wanderers for forty agonising years.

Jonah: praying from the belly of a fish.

Job: the good man inflicted, infected; robbed of every comfort.

The disciples: adrift and disillusioned, moments after the agonising crucifixion of the man they’d called ‘Teacher’; the one who should have been ‘Messiah’.

When it comes to the the long, hard road through the dark - through isolation, suffering, disillusionment - there’s no shortage of biblical models to call upon.

Right now, for all of us, the COVID-19 pandemic poses one such impossibly long road to collectively navigate. Distanced from each other as we have been, it can seem a very lonely road indeed.

Many might see the coinciding of this trial with the arrival of the Spring - with its sunny days, blossom and birdsong - as a cruel twist of the knife.

For me, in a period where I myself grieve a very dear loss, the arrival of Spring outside the windows has been a much needed source of fortitude. The nights draw shorter. Daytime chill gives way to warmth. Life bursts forth from months of natural torpor.

Spring - and indeed Easter - remind us what all of those stories pointed to: dawn’s light at the end of the dark road. Amidst that isolation, suffering and disillusionment, the promise of renewed life is sustenance; fertile ground from which hope, faith and love might blossom.

I hold Spring’s promises close in these times. I hope you will too.

The road is long. But as Martin Luther King Jr stressed:

If you can’t fly, then run.

If you can’t run, then walk.

If you can’t walk, then crawl.

But by all means, keep moving.

Bradley Fear

Attender at Wellington Quaker Meeting