I’ve been holding a sick kid today. Poor Plum has been poorly. Just a run-of-the-mill October cold, but he isn’t really sure what’s hit him. At two years and a bit, he hasn’t had many Octobers. Nor colds, come to think of it. He’s spent the day on the sofa watching Sesame Street and snoozing. He didn’t want blankets, just teddy bears (and his beloved teddy dragon, too) but he still looked chilly so I dug out Blue’s old lion costume from under the bed, and helped him climb in. It’s a head-to-foot furry suit with a gloriously-maned head, a zipper right up the front, and a padded tummy which helped with the warmth and also made the sniffly wearer that much more adorable and snuggly.
We’ve just had a wonderfully full weekend with old friends. We spent plenty of time on chilly beaches, staying up late and roasting marshmallows in damp evenings. Germs were bound to get passed around. Especially to Plum, the youngest and most coveted cuddle of them all.
Now Monday morning already and the older ones have pedalled off to school, leaving Plum on his own with me and Sesame Street. His voice was too rough to sing along with the nursery rhymes, and he really wasn’t sure about the Count, but he liked Ernie and Bert. Especially when they rode on their bicycles because Ernie, like Plum, rides a yellow bike. Small connections help enormously when you are little and feeling under the weather.
After a while, he fell asleep using the teddies (and my badly-placed knitting bag) as a pillow, so I went into the kitchen to wash up the dishes and scare up a blog idea. I rather idly scribbled out what turned into a sermon – and a rather boring one at that – but decided that wasn’t what any of us needed. I did, however, find one line that rung true.
The gospel lectionary we will read on Sunday is the story is about blind Bartimaeus who called out to Jesus on the road near Jericho. At first, the crowd tried to silence him, but he kept on bellowing, and so Jesus asked some of the followers to go to Bartimaeus and bring him closer. So they did – and to Bartimaeus, they said “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”
No sermon. Not even a developed story for context. Just one line, but to me it sounded like comfort today. Take heart. We’ll get up later and answer the calls that come. There will be food to prepare and stories from school to hear. There might be a bath in the evening to soothe the sniffles, and there will be toys to clear away as always. Then tonight and then tomorrow, there will be news of the election. But for now, those two words are enough to get me through.
Take heart. It is enough.
