Glastonbury

 I wonder if you’ve ever been to Glastonbury. I’ve been to other festivals, but not Glastonbury, which must rate as the most famous pop festival, attracting big names like Stormzy, Beyonce, Radiohead, and over the years legends like Paul McCartney, Blur and David Bowie.

But I’m afraid to say that I read last week that Glastonbury 2021 has now joined the list of of events[1] cancelled by Covid, and owner of Worthy Farm, Michael Eavis released this statement last Thursday….

“With great regret, we must announce that this year’s Glastonbury Festival will not take place… In spite of our efforts to move Heaven & Earth, it has become clear that we simply will not be able to make the Festival happen this year, we are so sorry to let you all down”[2].

I know not everyone will see Glastonbury as the great cultural event of the year, nor be as positive about some of the non-musical activities that go on there, but whatever your musical taste, we can all relate to the disappointment of having things that you were looking forward to knocked out of the calendar.

We are all finding the current uncertainty hard. Not knowing when the kids will be back at school, not knowing whether a holiday will go ahead, not even knowing when it will be OK to shake someone’s hand or go into someone’s house. These are tough times for everyone.

But that statement on the closure of Glastonbury also raised a smile for me. Because there’s a phrase buried in there which I find is very thought provoking. Did you hear it… “In spite of our efforts to move Heaven and Earth, we simply will not be able to make the Festival happen this year”.

Perhaps we are finally waking up to the fact that our human efforts so very limited. We can put in what feels like huge efforts to move heaven and earth, but get nowhere.

But there is someone who can move Heaven and Earth very effortlessly. In John’s gospel, there are 9 references to the claim that Jesus “came from heaven”. God did move heaven and earth to get his Son to the planet. Nothing can stop his plans.

And wonderfully, he moved heaven and earth to get to us because he loves us and wants us to be with him. He moved heaven and earth to put his Son on the cross so that we might be forgiven.

Glastonbury may be cancelled, but God’s love is not. And nor is the one day in the diary which will never be cancelled- the day Jesus comes back to judge and rescue.  

Followed by any Glastonbury hero- eg Paul McCartney eg “Blackbird”- who was due to play this summer.