Can we keep calm and carry on, asks Sheffield minister

I’m the minister of a large church community who live across Sheffield and we are desperate to meet each other again.

We can get together in church with masks on, and our livestreams of our services are fantastic. However, there is nothing like the richness of old and new friends gathering and talking in the same room.

Right now, it can’t be done.

This week as the sun shone, I felt more like banging my head against the wall and giving up, not ‘keeping calm and carrying on’.

As track-and-trace and the rule of six take force, it will mean a major test of the strength of Sheffield’s community spirit.

It’s easy to blame the young for refusing to distance. Or the Government.

It’s a big ask for everybody to keep to the rules after our patience has been tried.

Will we stick to it?

But more significantly, why would we?

We’re being asked to be selfless, to put others above ourselves.

As Jesus puts it in the Bible, to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’.

I remember learning Jesus’ ‘Golden Rule’ in RE lessons at school, ‘treat people the same way you want them to treat you’ (Matthew 7).

Now the whole nation is being called to new levels of self-control and consideration for the sake of the most vulnerable in our communities.

I feel life’s challenges are best kept in perspective.

A friend of mine works in medical development in Afghanistan and tells me the entire nation has no more than 50 ventilators in their hospitals.

In countries with minimal medical care when people’s family and friends get very sick with Covid, they will probably die, and that’s a fact of life they live with everyday.

We can prevent unnecessary suffering, and that motivates me to follow the guidelines.

So this week I’ll be trying harder to keep calm, and carry on.

The Reverend Nick Allan is a minister at The Well Church, Ecclesall Road, Sharrow.

See wellsheffield.com