Trinity 8 – 11th August 2019 – Treasure Trail
Deacon Christine Saccali – St Paul’s Athens
I speak in the name of the Triune God Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It is often remarked that living in Greece is learning to live with the unpredictable and certainly over my 40, yes four zero years, here I have found that to be true and am still finding it. Take the earthquake, or heartquake as an Italian fellow deacon called it endearingly by mistake, which we lived through in Athens last month and which to some of us brought back memories of 1999 or 1981 here in Athens. It suddenly jolts the heart just as the heart stopping fires last year did.
Earthquakes are notoriously difficult to predict even though we know we live in a seismic country, there is an app to record the latest global shocks but nothing to foretell them. We put it to the back of our minds until another tremor shocks us. It is good to be aware and take precautions in case of fire, winds or quakes but we cannot live in constant expectation of them not carrying out our normal lives. This can be applied to living with political upheaval. War, knife or gun crime or terrorism as well.