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Good morning. Five months into the pandemic, I’ve come to a simple way forward. Everyone else should keep the rules. But I should be allowed some flexibility. Social distancing is good. But when I see a long-lost friend, I can’t bear it when he can’t hug me. We all believe in justice. We march for it, work for it, labour to overturn miscarriages of it. Act justly, and all the ills of society fall away. Sometimes we’re so confident right lies entirely on our side, that we denounce. We call it speaking truth to power. We assume all the truth belongs to us, while all the power belongs to somebody else. It can be a brave thing to do. It can also be an exhilarating thing to do. It doesn’t feel so brave or exhilarating when we’re trying to work out if we can go on a long-planned holiday with another family. We quickly say ‘Does it matter? Will anyone know? What are the rules, anyway?’ Suddenly we’re not upholding a cause. We’re in a prison. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s attended a speed awareness course after misjudging my accelerator. Everyone looks at the floor. We’re all in the wrong. We just hoped it wouldn’t matter this time. We all want justice when it’s applied to someone else, someone we don’t know, who’s at fault for all the problems of the world. When it applies to us, we want something else. We want mercy. But mercy doesn’t mean no judgement. It means no vengeance. And no enmity. It’s about using power not to imprison and destroy, but to release and heal. It considers a larger context, recognises a wider perspective. A friend of mine says, ‘Justice begins when we stop judging.’ What she means is, being just requires us to begin with our own shortcomings. ‘Excuse me sir, you need to wear a face mask on this train.’ ‘No,’ I think. ‘Other people need to.’ There’s a line in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ It’s talking about two painful things. There’s the dreadful deeds done to us, which make us bitter. And there’s the terrible things we’ve done, which leave us guilty. We want justice for the first, so we can be vindicated; but we fear justice for the second, lest we be condemned. ‘Forgive us… as we forgive’ is saying we can’t have one without the other. Together they’re warning us, ‘Be careful when you call for justice; because one day, justice may call for you.’