‘Are we there yet?’ It’s the familiar cry of the child in the back of the car. Well, we are all saying it now. Are we there yet? Is lockdown over? We shall find that out, we hope, later this month.

It has been a long and difficult journey through Covid. Many experts are saying that we will simply have to live with new Covid variants even after we’ve come out of lockdown. We will be more careful, I imagine: perhaps sanitising our hands before entering a shop will become the norm. Who knows?

One thing to say is that during the pandemic we have gradually come to appreciate what we have, rather than to keep talking about what we are missing. This has a very important resonance with Christian faith – which is that we are to cherish what is, to live each moment as if it were our last, and to be thankful.

I may have said it before, but thankfulness is a great liberator – it frees us from much that can otherwise bring us down. As someone once said: ‘if the only prayer we ever uttered were “thank you”, it would be enough’.

With every blessing

Stephen