Reflection by Canon Bob

​Something quite unexpected happened the other day!
​
Completely out of the blue a book was delivered through the letter box. It is as you can see a record of a pilgrimage that I was part of in 1973.

My home church was All Saints, Crosby which in those days was linked with St Luke’s. The Curate, Ian Elliott and his wife, Ronnie organized the journey (long before internet or email) for 6 of us from the ‘youth group’. We were to travel in a Bedford van to Israel and back. Yes from Crosby to Israel!

Over the years we have had some reunions but Ronnie had decided that the time was right to produce this book capturing photographs and memories.
So I have been transported back to a time when I was 19 years old and for 5 weeks lived with 7 others as we travelled some 5.000 miles. It took 2 weeks to get to Israel, visiting on the way Rome, Pompeii, Corinth, Thessalonica, Philippi, Istanbul and Ephesus. We then had a week visiting all the sights in the Holy Land camping first by Lake Galilee and then outside Jerusalem. (In case you are interested I am the one in the photo in the blue shirt with hand on hip!) Our journey home took in the Acropolis and Mars Hill in Athens, a sail along the Corinth Canal and a brief visit to Venice.

As you can imagine the whole experience was the very opposite of Social Isolation and was a real lesson in how to live as part of a small community. This was combined with visiting places of great holiness.

At the moment we are denied much of what living in community involves, although keeping in touch with each other is, thankfully possible, and extremely valuable. Being grounded we are also unable to visit places of personal significance.

My hope is that when we can resume whatever normality may look like, this period of time will give us a sense of value for the most important things in life.

Canon Bob

While you're here:
Why not prepare for next Sunday's worship? Our preparation sheet for adults and for children can be accessed by clicking on the Resources tab of this website: https://www.prayerforliverpool.org/prayer-resources.html.