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Space to process (18 May)

The thought this week is written by Beth Powney, EBA Regional Minister

Psalm 18:19  –  New International Version – UK

¹⁹ He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.

I have been reflecting on the disciples’ journey through Easter.  How traumatic that journey must have been for them!  Although Jesus had prepared them for his death, they hadn’t fully understood, and after the crucifixion were grieving.  They had lost a teacher, friend, the one they thought would change not just their lives, but the life of their nation.  They were experiencing trauma.

The past two years has brought, and continues to bring, challenges.  Life, even without a pandemic, can be traumatic in so many ways.  Travelling through trauma is difficult and tiring and sometimes brings a feeling of being ‘fenced in,’ of hopelessness.  It can make us behave in ways that we don’t expect.

We see something of this in the disciples’ journey:

Peter’s devastation as, under pressure, he does the one thing he promised Jesus he would never do.  When something shocking and traumatic happened he didn’t behave as he thought he would, instead he denied knowing Jesus.  He must have felt he had messed up to the point of no come-back.

Other disciples left Jerusalem.  Were they going home, withdrawing to a safe space?  As we read their conversation about Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion we can sense their confusion and loss of hope.  Withdrawing to the familiar must have felt comforting.

Withdrawal and loss of hope are common when going through trauma.  Our human brain goes into emergency mode and that leads often to withdrawal or sometimes to fending off the threat to our normal or trying to solve the problem.

Ministry brings us alongside people going through challenging times and that can be tiring especially when we are not immune to difficulties ourselves.

We see Jesus in these moments providing his friends with what they needed.  Time to process.  We see him cooking breakfast on a beach and eating with them.  In that relaxed space, eating and sharing together they start to process and make sense of what had happened and so to move into the new reality.

We see Jesus after breakfast making space for conversation with Peter – helping him to process his failure and to embrace a new reality, the stronger for it.

As he makes space to walk with the two disciples, his questions helped them to talk aloud, to process the events and finally, as he breaks bread with them, to move past the trauma and live in the new reality even though it wasn’t as they thought it would be.

Jesus gave his disciples space.  Space to think, process and move forward.  The space was different for each disciple, and each disciple had to choose to engage with Jesus in it.  What a gift to give!

In what ways are you able to offer space to people?

What does space look like for you?  How do you (will you?) engage with the space that the Lord offers you as he delights in you?

Image by Millar on Pixabay