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Good morning. I asked a young girl recently how she was getting on in lockdown and she said she found lessons on Zoom very difficult to concentrate on and was looking forward to getting back to school on Monday. I imagine many parents, after the pressure of helping their children do their school work on top of everything else, are looking forward to it even more eagerly. And we are all beginning to look forward again whether it is seeing grandchildren or having meals with friends. In recent months we have hardly dared to think of the future-and that has had a good side. Many of us have been learning much more about how to live in the present; how to appreciate what the French spiritual writer Pierre de Caussade called ‘The sacrament of the present moment.’ But without losing that lesson, we are now beginning to allow ourselves to look forward, and that also is an essential part of being human. Studies of allied prisoners of war after World War II discovered that those who had something to look forward to, say a child born after they had been sent abroad or, a wife they had not seen for years, were much more likely to survive those long years in prison than those who had nothing to live for. Hope is an essential part of being human. R. S. Thomas is a poet who still resonates for many even though, or perhaps because, so much of his poetry about life and God is pretty bleak. But every now and then he surprises us. In one poem he writes about wandering into a small Welsh village not seeking anything in particular and being taken by surprise by an overwhelming insight that, as he put it ‘There is everything to look forward to’. That’s so wonderfully enigmatic. What did he mean by everything? Why is there everything to look forward to? He leaves it hanging in the air for us to make our own answer. For most of Western history, the answer would have been quite clear-there is another better life beyond death. Now, many find that impossible to believe, one reason being the sheer difficulty of imagining what kind of world that could be. That’s why I am content to rest with some words of the 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson who wrote to a friend. "I believe we shall be in some manner cherished by our Maker-that the one who gave us this remarkable earth has the power still further to surprise that which he caused. Beyond that all is silence.” So, everything to look forward to, something that will take us by surprise, but something that invites deep reticence. Meanwhile the day ahead, the hour ahead to be lived in the present but with hope.