Please hold the line by Sheelagh Aston

You need to pray to God/Jesus. You start to say the opening of your prayer (Dear God/Heaven Father etc. ) for a voice to say:

Hello, you’re through to Heaven. Please note that our conversations are recorded for training the Angels and monitoring purposes. Did you know you can access information about our history, services, and membership via our guidebook The Bible (available in paperback, Kindle, and audio). If you still wish to speak to a member of the Holy Trinity Team, please choose from the following prayer options.

Press 1 – for prayers of Thanksgiving.

Press 2 – for support to avoid temptation and sin.

Press 3 – for your community, the church, and the world.

Press 4 – for prayers on behalf of the sick, suffering and dying.

Press 5 – for prayers of repentance and seeking God’s forgiveness.

For all other prayer requests or enquires please hold the line.

(Those of you who have a writer’s funny bone will no doubt be able to come up with your own amusing list)

I recently timed how long it took me to be connected to a human being when I needed to call a bank, a retailer, and a pet insurance company. Anywhere between 5-8 mins and longer if they wanted details to be imputed such as your bank sort code, DOB or policy number.

The above scenario might be tongue-in-cheek, but it does remind us how accessible God is to us and perhaps how we often make ourselves inaccessible to each other. Try arranging a business meeting or gathering with friends and family. They can entail endless rounds of diary ping-pong until a time and date is fixed. When we need to speak to God He is there.

I am coming out of a period of being in the editing trenches. I have some apologising to do to those I have not been in touch recently. How we balance our needs as writers to ‘get the job done’ and maintain our relationships with loved ones can be tricky. I know I can become blinkered when writing. I try to ‘block’ my time if I know I have an MS to revise or a new idea/blog. Making time for others is important not only because we care about them but because time away from writing can give us space to reflect, recharge and to remind those people they are important to you just as God reminds us we are important to Him.

Sheelagh is a writer, blogger and author living in the north of England. Her contemproary suspsense novel, In-Between Girl is the first in The Birchwood Inheritance series. Book II The Lost Daughter will be published later this year by Resolute Books.