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Last week, I discovered, or rather re-discovered, two of the best gifts I was ever given. On Tuesday, my colleagues and I decided to close our office and work from home. By Wednesday I learned that all my engagements which should have kept me on the road until June had been cancelled... and that I had time on my hands. Biblically speaking, that's the first gift. God in the great Jewish creation hymn begins by making light and darkness – day and night. That means time. And now many of us have it; some in an abundance they never anticipated. Without denying our understandable anxieties about health, family and finances, many of us now have the possibility of deciding what to do with our time. This causes some people to panic; panic about having to spend time with their spouse, partner or children, panic about not having access to the diversions of shopping, eating out, cinemas, pubs, football matches, parties. Many of us who complain about how busy we are, now given months of unexpected time, panic about what we will do with it... as if time were a hostile force which our busyness helped us to avoid. Time is not an enemy; but it will feel like an enemy unless we cherish it, and it shouldn't take a near death experience to help us cherish what we take for granted. But time was just the first gift. The second, equally a gift of God which I re-discovered last week was my self. God has a complex character - God appears in the Bible as a labourer, an architect, a warrior, a lover, a mother, a holiday-maker; God has a thousand guises. And each of us, made in God's image, has a unique self, like no one else's. And it's a complex self, sometimes dominated by our work, or our major interests, or our moods. And now, when much that engaged us has ceased, it may be that there are sides of our character, potentials within, unfulfilled intentions which can be given space. This could be anything from tidying our affairs and making our will, to doing all the jobs and making all the contacts which our previous busyness forbade. It might also be that this is a time in which we begin to love into life all the broken and vulnerable aspects of our self which have been long neglected; because in these times when neighbourliness is all important, so too is the perspective of Jesus, that we cannot love our neighbour if we will not love ourselves.