Hot tubs with flashing lights

 

I was out walking the dog yesterday when I met one of the young mums from our messy church who I hadn’t seen for quite a while.  She’s working from home and will be for quite some time to come and, being an outgoing kind of person, misses the office chat and relational side of things.  Having a dog gets her out of the house, but otherwise she would be home 12/13 hours a day. Her husband has not been able to see his parents in the south of England as they have been shielding and with his sister in America he feels the distance.  Their lovely wee lass has settled back into school again but didn’t find it easy at the start as she had been away for so long.   Just a glimpse of a fairly normal family dealing with the fallout of Covid and trying to keep the show on the road.

As I was turning away she said, ‘oh by the way we have started our own business’.  Now, being deaf, I thought I’d misheard her, but sure enough so they have.   They hire out an inflatable hot tub and apparently are fully booked for the coming few weekends.  In the telling of the story she was particularly excited about flashing lights that are part of the whole deal.  I said I’d pop by some time and get more details as my head is buzzing with questions, how do you inflate it, how do you get the water in and how does it get hot and most of all about the flashing lights???.

Suddenly though the coming months didn’t seem quite so gloomy as I envisaged all these suburban families discovering inflatable hot tubs and flashing lights reaching into the night sky above Bishopbriggs.   As she said to me, ‘with us all having to have staycations we need to make the most of it’.   Don’t you just love that, people using their own ingenuity and verve to make the most of where we find ourselves and look for ways not just to survive but to thrive too.  Bubbly hot water lit up from below and under the stars on a cold night…well, what’s not to like!

At the start of lockdown in late spring there was quite an outpouring of creativity and I wonder whether as we get into a different kind of autumn than we are used to whether we need to find some of that creative spirit again.   Thankfully our movements are not so restricted and apparently Brits have been stocking up on patio heaters and fire pits.  We can learn a lot from the folk in the north of Norway who are used to long winters, who enjoy the opportunities that winter brings, and love the seasonal changes and cosiness.   Research shows that the more they saw winter as an exciting opportunity to enjoy a cooler climate the better they fared, with high levels of life satisfaction and overall mental health.  They also found amazingly enough that these attitudes increase with latitude, in other words the more positive wintertime mind set is most common where it is most needed. (Observer 27^th September)

As Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit is God’s creative presence on earth sustaining and energising us.   My prayer is that this next few months we will open ourselves to such a wonderful presence and not only survive but thrive, having the way shown to us by a young family who love inflatable hot tubs with flashing lights and want to share the love!