the chains of routine tasks

It's funny the things that stick in the mind.

Like I often remember the old Erskine ferry (it may have been the Renfrew ferry, one of the two at any rate!). The way the cars drove on and then the ferry took us out across the river Clyde towards the other side. And then out in the middle the current took hold of the boat and dragged it sometimes way down river from the point we knew we should be disembarking.

But, of course, there were chains beneath the water and the nearer that we approached the other side, the more the chains kicked in and hauled us back to where the landing ramp was set.

As a child it always seemed like some strange sort of magic. And in some ways, even now, the memory of it all retains that lovely, magic aura which is integral to just so much of life as viewed through children's wondering eyes.

I was thinking of that again today. The ferry. And those strong, secure but always unseen chains which kept the boat from simply drifting in the currents way down stream.

The chains of our normal routines in some ways serve a function that's in truth quite like those chains the Erskine ferry used to have. Because there is a river that needs to be crossed when someone so dear passes on.

Those chains of our normal routines are the things, I'm now aware, which keep us from being swept away downstream when travelling bit by bit across the rivers of our grief. For the currents of such grief are often strong.

And crossing to the other side and getting on with life is far from being an easy task. We're really at the mercy of a potent flow of sorrow and of sadness which can surely most times otherwise quite knock us right off course.

Those unseen chains of all the basic routines of our 'normal' lives are just the thing we need, I guess, to drag us to the other side and where we need to be.

Today's been a bit like that again. The 'routine' tasks involved for me in planning and preparing for the services again as Sunday starts to loom: the 'routine' tasks of calling by on different homes and seeing a range of very different people for all sorts of different reasons.

These 'routine' tasks, they kind of subtly, slowly serve to drag me gently back on course and back to where I'm meant to be when landing on the other side.

There's something in the book of psalms about the Lord, in just that way, bringing us safely to our desired haven.

Often in the imagery we use, the 'river' is a picture for our death: the final, potent river that we have to cross. But it isn't the only great river there is for us all to be crossed. Grief is a river just like that as well.

But whatever the river, and however strong the currents in that river prove to be, the Lord has set those chains in place which bring us safely over to the place we need to be.

So I thank God once again today for the chains of all those routine, often fairly humdrum, little tasks my daily work involves. They keep me, even in the midst of flowing grief, they keep me right on track.