I found myself up a ladder the other day, securing an external light which had broken from fixings in the wind. In more normal times, we would have asked someone to do this job properly, but just now we are thrown back on whatever skill or resource we have to hand, while so many professionals are unable to ply their own trades. Even my home cooking is getting more practice, which is not to say it is improving.

As we do our best to deal with the little challenges of the home, outside in the wider world  people face challenges on a massive scale – providing health and social care, producing face masks and gowns, working out how to save jobs and deal with vanished income and fighting life-threatening disease. It can be hard to be faced in a remote way with such big challenges and to think, well what am I doing? What should I be doing?

In the story of Esther, chapter 4 there is a telling verse “who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”. The Biblical context has Esther as a Queen called by God, through her uncle Mordecai, to intervene to save the lives of the Jews. She hesitates, unsure, because to intervene may mean death or punishment.

The verse can make us all think – what about me? have I been put in this place in life for such a time as this? Whether it is working on a vaccine or as a volunteer, or phoning a neighbour, picking up shopping or prescriptions for others, or calling to mind through prayer all those who have loved us and cherished us and given us chances throughout our lives, praying for God’s blessing upon them. These are the big and the little ways in which we have been prepared for such a time as this.

Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, was faced in a remote way with the challenge of the early Christians. He does not cease to pray for them. And particularly, he asks that they may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him. How should we lead lives worthy of the Lord but by using every skill, every talent, every lesson learned and every gift given to support each other in such a time as this?