A few years ago, Anna Gregorowski and I chatted on the portico with the visiting preacher, an African bishop. Had he enjoyed his stay, we asked, and was he ready to go home? His answer to this second question was a striking one, and has stayed with Anna and with me ever since:
“I am not ready, but it is time.”
The Bishop’s profound and practical reflection is in my thoughts as, after 32 years in London (and 24 at St Martin’s) I prepare to sell my flat and, in the next few months, resettle in North Yorkshire. It’s been an evolving idea for many years, with pros and cons for staying and for moving. I am ready and I am not ready. But it is time.
How often do we need to take up our courage before we feel quite ready to do something? Seamus Heaney writes of the synchronistic times when ‘hope and history rhyme’ but says this happens only ‘once in a lifetime’. It might perhaps be more often than that, but most of the time it’s just not that neat.
Sometimes it is time to do something, even if we don’t think we are ready. Sometimes we feel ready, but it turns out not to be the time. My hour is not yet come or The hour has come. Can we trust God to transform our circumstances, our courage, our motivation?
Are you ready? Is it time?
Ali Lyon
