They said that once the most vulnerable were vaccinated we could “cry freedom”.

They said that once all adults over the age of 50 were vaccinated we would be home and dry.

They said that once most adults over 50 had had both jabs, and adults under 50 had been vaccinated we could lose the restrictions.

So we know how this is likely to go…

…July 19th will come and it will be, “Ah, but the children aren’t yet vaccinated and we need these six weeks before schools go back for that to happen.”

And then the kids will go back to school and it will be, “Oh, but now we need to give a booster jab to the vulnerable groups.”

And then it will be the autumn and we’ll hear, “Sorry folks, it looks like there’s going to be a massive flu surge this winter (because there was hardly any flu last winter) and we can’t risk the NHS being overwhelmed, so restrictions need to stay a little longer.”

And then it will be next spring and we’ll still be where we are and we’ll have seen more businesses go out of business, and the poor getting poorer, those with mental health issues suffering more, students still paying thousands of pounds to sit in their bedrooms watching online lectures, churches still not singing, or in some cases even gathering and the ‘precautionary principle’ leading to the general fraying of the social fabric.

So the question (which I first posed last August) arises again: when is enough, enough? When do we start disobeying?

When does our application of Romans 13 submit to our application of Ephesians 5:19, Psalm 96, Psalm 147, etc.? When does our concern for the overall wellbeing of our congregations, and broader communities, override our concern to be seen to be ‘good citizens’ in our punctilious following of the rules? When do the realities of the very limited health benefits achieved by ‘Hands, Face, Space’ become outweighed by the realities of the benefits of more normal human interaction?

When do we finally say, enough is enough?