If the Lord had not been on our side’, let Israel say, ‘then the raging waters would have swept us away’”…

It’s an arresting start to one of the ‘Songs of Ascent’, sung by pilgrims as they made their way to the Holy City; and the imagery in Psalm 124 – of feeling attacked, swallowed alive, engulfed, trapped – continues to resonate nearly three millennia after the song was first written.

Underlying the Hebrew here is the word ‘Emmanuel’, though couched in the negative: ‘if God had not been with us, then imagine what would have ensued!’. But God has been with them, is the message of the Psalm, so that real disaster has been averted. ‘And let’s celebrate that together’, adds the Psalmist, as he encourages all Israel to join the song.

It’s an important message, not least with the gloom surrounding the announcement of an omicron variant of Covid-19 and all the ensuing challenges faced by our churches, schools and businesses. How many more letters in the Greek alphabet will become common parlance, we wonder, before this wretched pandemic is behind us?

In response, there’s no promise of an easy life here, but the prospect of both hope and help in the midst of our struggles and difficulties. And where better place to start this Advent than in joining together in another song – the one that starts, ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’?

Every Blessing
Bishop Andrew