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Good morning.Ìý

My aunt was born in 1925 and brought up during the Second World War. When she left school she got her first job working in one of Glasgow’s famous City Bakeries shops.Ìý Her branch was in the centre of town, so it was always bustling and busy. Throughout her life my aunt thrived on order and habit, so the unchanging routine of travelling to work each day suited her very well.Ìý

I remember being in the car with her one morning – this was many years after she retired; we were driving through town, and she was watching all the people hurrying off buses and thronging the streets.Ìý ‘I wonder what jobs they’re all going to’, she said, ‘and where they’ve come from.’Ìý She remembered when she was young, visiting her aunt in the town of Greenock on the Clyde coast, and being thrilled by the sight of hundreds of men pouring out of the shipyard at the end of the day.Ìý

We’re so used to the flood and ebb of working people in towns and cities. It’s part of the rhythm and routine of life.Ìý For many people commuting was an unpleasant daily chore to be endured – but now that so many of us must work from home or have lost jobs, it’s yet another loss of the normal. A bewildering change.ÌýÌý Quiet skies, empty streets.Ìý I Ìýwonder what my aunt would have thought of it all.

God who is timeless while we are rooted in the present, and who is changeless while we are rocked by upset and uncertainty: grant us steady hearts and minds this morning, and open eyes to the needs of our neighbours.Ìý Amen

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