Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friend,

Recently I’ve had an image that has come to mind a lot - one of those persistent things that takes a while to hold meaning but seems that it must. It’s the image of being stretched, and I imagine that you have had experience of the kind of stretching that keeps coming to mind. You may stretch yourself across the TV when you realize there is something you don’t want a child to see on its way. You might extend yourself in the middle of a pandemic to care for family and friends, to perform your job duties, and you might find yourself stretched in directions you couldn’t have imagined. For the sake of love you may have done things that would have previously been unimaginable, or seem impossible. Often you’ll stretch yourself for the sake of something good, to provide protection, to make a new thing possible, but you and your body know that at some point you have to come back to your center, otherwise you will start to feel like one of those inflatable waving arm people that advertise on corners, or like Gumby. You have to come back to your center in order to reach out, to stretch out again. It can feel like whiplash when you’re able to settle into a more calm place, when suddenly every thought doesn’t have to go to a particularly end, you may wonder what is next.

We can do amazing things for the sake of love, but we can only stretch ourselves for a little while before needing to either come back to our center or adjust, we have our limits. One of the stark realities of proclamation of Good Friday though, is that when Jesus stretched out himself it wasn’t just for the season or the moment, but somehow forever. It didn’t have its limits. Somehow the center of God is actually being stretched out for the whole world. The starkness, the quiet, the expanse of this holy day holds the truth that Jesus stretched himself out over all of us.

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

In Christ,

Mtr Taylor