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Good morning. As I heard about the new Covid variant, Omicron, a 1948 verse by Carson Robinson came to mind.

I open the door and the flies swarm in
Shut the door and I’m sweating again.

We no sooner get the Delta variant under control when another variant appears which could be more infectious and less responsive to current vaccines. As the verse goes on

And in the process I cracked my shin,
Just one darn thing after another.

The lesson I draw from this is that there may be some problems that cannot be solved in the short term but just have to be managed the best we can. And this is true not just about Covid, but in relation to the world refugee crisis. 82.4 million people round the world have been forced to flee their homes and 26.4 million are refugees. We must stop the immoral smugglers putting refugees at risk in hazardous crossings across the channel. But for the foreseeable future there will continue to be people fleeing oppression, violence, starvation and the effects of climate change, desperate to find a safe home, many of them drawn to Britain because of kin and because English is an international language. They will be willing to risk their lives in hazardous journeys because the alternative is worse. This is a complicated problem that is not going to be solved in the short term, so it has to be managed.

The same dilemma faced by politicians is also part of our personal lives. This week I read an article about the letters of Enid Blyton in which she wrote about the difficulty of combining writing with being a mother. A dilemma known today to so many parents. You cannot be a parent as though that was the only thing you had to do, and you cannot do your paid work as though that was your only obligation. The two roles somehow have to be juggled, leading to some unease, perhaps even guilt, but still they both have to be done.

When in the Hebrew Scriptures God appeared to King Solomon and asked what he wanted, Solomon replied simply ‘Wisdom’ And he was told that he would receive not only wisdom but other gifts as well. Wisdom is not a flashy virtue, it is not out to make a splash. But it is the quality we need to manage so many problems for which there is no quick solution. It is a quality of maturity: political maturity and personal maturity.

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