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From Canon Ann Easter, Chaplain to the Queen:

I heard that the German authorities are thinking of encouraging citizens to stockpile food, water and medicines for use in case of national emergency.

My parents would not have needed to be told that since, having grown up during the Second World War, they always had a pile of tins and packets which were only to be used in cases of dire need. Indeed, when we were clearing the house after my Dad died, we found them, stuff from times long before anyone ever worried about a sell-by date - there were tiny tins of cream that no-one liked, and tins of sweetcorn too big for one person and not big enough for the four of us and a tin of something called ‘Macedoine of vegetables’ – we opened them and of course, they were all perfectly edible.

Nowadays, I think we have a few days’ food in the freezer at home though I’m not always entirely sure what’s in those plastic bags because the labels fall off. I once rushed out handing Christopher a bag of brown knobbly stuff, suggesting that he defrost it and serve it with spaghetti for our dinner – it turned out to be the sort of sweet mincemeat you put in pies at Christmas…… We had fish and chips that night.

But it made me wonder what we might do as individuals to stockpile the skills and strengths to use when those good and bad times, come along – because we can be sure that, wherever or however we live, we will encounter shocks and surprises, crises and emergencies. But, like Carly Simon sang, there’s more room in a broken heart, and each time we manage to cope with one of those life events, we make ourselves stronger, more ready for the next one.

Lady Julian of Norwich, who was a Christian mystic back in the fourteenth century, said that simply being alive means failure and difficulties for all of us, but that, whatever happens, God will not let us be overcome by it. That tough little stockpile of precious memories and love shared will see us through – even if they’re not labelled!