Well you could never have written the script for the last month! All flights cancelled over the British Isles and most of Western Europe for nearly a week. And the General Election, and potentially the Bristish political system, being completely redefined by the Leaders’ Thursday Television Debates. If a novelist had written that story line a few weeks ago they wouldn’t have got away with it!

I heard a story of one of our ministers who was texted on holiday in Cyprus with a message that kindly warned him that his flight home was likely to be delayed by volcanic dust. His reply was brief, “Pull the other one.” And I’m sure his sense of disbelief was matched by many thousands of stranded people, before disbelief turned to shock and despair. It really was an extraordinary episode. But I was fascinated to see how quickly people were able to see the silver lining to the volcanic dust clouds. People revelled in the sight of skies that had been set free from the graffiti of vapour trails, and luxuriated in the peace of gardens below flight paths.

I take two major things out of these strange weeks. Firstly, the helpful reminder of our world’s increasing fragility. Our clever world is so intricately interconnected that it is very hard for any disaster in the world not to have significant implications for the rest of the world. It was interesting (although I recognize that it was tragic for many) to see how quickly the loss of air transport was affecting flower, fruit and vegetable farmers in Africa. In the pre-Industrial world life would have gone on as usual, but not today. Businesses of all kinds were radically affected by the lack of air transport, to say nothing of the agony for hundreds of thousands of stranded passengers.

Being confronted with our fragility is always good for us. Our society wants us to forget our mortality and seeks to obscure any reminders of it beneath a mountain of glossy images of health, beauty and material prosperity. It’s so easy for us to drink in the lies and distortions of the media moguls. But the fact is that, in terms of world history, we are only here for a few decades. As human beings we are fragile and it is vital that we remember it. The alternative is that we turn ourselves into mini gods and forget our moment by moment dependence on God.

The fast moving election story is also deeply good for us. Elections are so often boringly predictable, but not this one! This gives us a wonderful opportunity to remind ourselves that we do not have control of the future – our future is in God’s hands. The electorate will make its decision within a few days, but nothing changes the fact that we cannot predict the future or take it under our control. In humility we need to acknowledge that our greatest security lies in the fact that we don’t control the future. We are secure in God’s hands and nowhere else.