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Good morning. They say you can take the nurse out of nursing but never nursing out of the nurse which is why having trained some 35 years ago there is a part of my inner most being which wants to make things better. Yet I have learnt over the years that part of being a nurse is also to wait. There is in nursing the discipline of staying. As Nurses we stay with people in the moment, not thinking about what we have just been doing nor thinking about what we are going to do next; we stay. Nurses “stay" and look on that which others cannot bear, we wait with the suffering of others and we sit in the shadow of death. On Good Friday Christians stay helpless looking into the loss and suffering of the cross like the women who were told to stay away when Jesus was dying. The women stood at a distance, pushed away from a horror, a spectacle that was as repulsive as it was politically astute. This death wasn't intended for women's eyes. Yet for those women something, maybe devotion or love, kept them clinging on to Jesus in his last hours. What does this speak to us of the love and suffering of mothers who cling to their children who die on the streets of our cities through violent crimes? Two weeks ago I was in Trafalgar Square alongside church leaders standing with those who have lost family members or friends to knife crime. They spoke of their grief and we sat with them and my heart wept. Behind St John’s Church Hackney is one of London’s busiest knife amnesty bins and whilst these actions do not solve the problem of knife crime it does say something about how the Church is willing to stay with those who are suffering and hurting as they seek to find hope and healing. For Christians, the Cross speaks of a God who is there in our suffering and stays with us even when we aren’t able to rush away to the joy of Easter day. It speaks of a God who stays with us when we find ourselves left with the emptiness of Holy Saturday. And whilst it speaks of suffering it also speaks of love. As a Priest I still find myself sitting with people and there is still a part of me that wants to make things better and at times I feel more helpless now than when I was a nurse. However, I am grateful for having learnt that sometimes all you can do is stay and wait and whilst I sit and wait I join my voice with theirs and cry out “How long O lord, how long?”