A short (but true) story for the Sunday Last before Lent: “We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven” (2 Peter 1)

_______

Every day, at around about eleven in the morning, the world stood still. Teachers fell quiet mid-lesson, principals mid-lecture, parents part-way through a nursery rhyme. No one heard a baby cry or the teller call out, “Next!” It was an accidental, almost religious observation – a moment not of silence, since the sky filled the earth with sound such as none could counter, but of the withholding of breath, a suspended sentence.

After the iconic birds were grounded, the opposite transpired: the skies fell silent, only the scrawl of vapour left to tell their tale, while the world prattled on, oblivious still to the voice of heaven.