What Humans Have Always Done

May 5, 2020

Beloved:

This morning I remarked how strange it is to think that everyone we know is also at home nearly all the time, and my son respectfully disagreed.  “What’s strange,” he said, “is that we think it’s strange.  Most people in history spent plenty of time staying at home to avoid disease and plagues.  It was business as usual until about fifty years ago.”*  I remember the nurse at the pediatrician’s office squirting a tube of purple juice into our mouths, and my mother telling us how kids who got polio had to live inside iron boxes so they could breathe.  I also remember the giant, itchy scab we got on our arms from our smallpox vaccines.**

His kindly reminder helped me to relax further into the human normalcy of this season and to be grateful for what progress has been made.  I’d rather enjoy going out to eat or to visit with my sisters.  But not at the risk of someone else’s childhood.  It turns out kids can contract COVID-19.  At first doctors believed otherwise.  I can definitely do this for someone else’s kids,  as can most everyone I know.  It’s what human beings have always done, remember.  And, reading our text for this week I realize it’s a perfect opportunity to practice what our Bible preaches in John 14 — abiding.  About to take leave of his disciples, Jesus explains he’s going to his Father to prepare a place for them where they will abide with himself and the Father.  The disciples are more upset about his leaving than glad about his promise to return and take them with him.  In time they come to embrace the promise and the faith therein.

That faith that comes with abiding ... it’s another word for “staying put.”  It’s by staying put that we learn to stay put faithfully, but by enjoying this life of ours — no matter what the days are made of — that we learn to enjoy this life.  Circular to be sure, just like life within eternity — endless and complete at once, even as we live it.

As you are staying put these days, what are you discovering about yourself and life together that you never knew before?  I’d love to hear your insights.  In the meantime, 


~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

*If you’re needing something new to watch and can stream programming, check out the miniseries John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.
**Children are still vaccinated against polio but not smallpox.