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Coronavirus Bingo

“The promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away...” Acts 2.14a, 26-41 (https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
Someone sent me the Coronavirus Bingo Game. There are no prizes, but to relieve the tedium you have to get a line or - better still - a full house. Each square contains a lockdown activity or event such as ‘Ordered Food Delivery’ (you should be so lucky!), ‘Baked Bread’ (so that’s where all the yeast has gone!),  ‘Used Zoom’ (which straightaway rules some people out!), ‘Forgot What Day It Is’, ‘Online Shopping’, ‘Tried A New Hobby’, ‘Exercised More’, ‘Listened to a Podcast’, ‘Slept in Late’, ‘Binge Watched TV Series’, ‘Midday Nap’, ‘Cried’ and ‘Googled Symptoms’.  
To get a full house you have to be able to cross off ‘Cleaned, Cleaned, Cleaned’ and ‘Started A Garden’, so even if there were prizes there would be few winners. Bald headed people are also precluded from winning the big prize because one square is ‘Gave Yourself Bangs’. I had to look that one up and found that, as your hair gets longer, (those of you who have this problem), it quickly becomes the only option unless you dare to cut your fringe!
There is one square which everyone can tick: ‘I’m Essential’. Note, it doesn’t say, ‘I’m An Essential Worker’! We just have to be essential to someone, and thankfully we are.
In this week’s passage from the Acts of the Apostles Peter says, ‘Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty’ that ‘everyone of you’ can ‘repent and be baptised… in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him’.
And, as Peter later came to realise, this promise isn’t just for the House of  Israel. We’re all so essential to God’s Big Project that God wrote every one of us into the plan from the very beginning!


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