Speak to Me Sunday:

A few weeks ago, I came across the photos from Simon Roberts’ exhibition, Beneath the Pilgrim Moon (2021), featuring sculptures that were wrapped in plastic during the refurbishment of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The fact that the photographs were taken during the second Covid-19 lockdown (while the museum was closed to the public) makes the images reflective of a world that stood still during a pandemic.

A world trapped by fear and ignorance, hemmed in by borders, trapped by the unknown.

The images are haunting, beautiful, sad.

Life as we know it can change in an instant, casting us onto unchartered waters in a rowboat that heaves to and fro with the current. There is so much that can bring us to our knees — grief, addiction, unemployment, death, self-doubt, illness, divorce, disability—all of which, like the plastic covering those statues, can leave us feeling trapped.

And yet … the images are also hopeful.

I look at those trapped images encased in transparent plastic and realize all those things that can paralyze us do NOT prevent God’s light and grace from shining through to us. And when we dig deep to our faith, we can see through the circumstance, whatever it may be, to see beyond to that light and grace. To receive it.

And to find the hope.