Oh, What a Year

Oh, what a year. Think of what we have learned. How to pronounce ‘Fauci.’ What it means to ‘livestream’. How simple concepts like ‘follow the science’ or ‘wear a mask’ can start a family fight and divide a nation. And how to use public health statistics to find glimmers of hope instead of yet another reason to argue.

We will remember how churches which hoped to open by Easter 2020, will be only partially opened (or still closed) on Easter 2021. We will remember braving outdoor gatherings in the summer and fall of 2020, because it was that or we become hermits and drive each other stark raving mad.  We will remember Thanksgiving and Christmas family meals held via screen light instead of candlelight.  We will remember how ‘Zoom Fatigue’ became a thing.

 Oh, what a year.  What will we do with these lessons about our ability to adapt (or not), to co-exist (or not), to be patient (or not)?

 Perhaps we will see that, if we as individuals and a society can make it through the mess of the last twelve months, then we can make it through anything. I hope we will see that despite our foibles and frailties, the majority have the capability to care for each other most of the time. I hope we will see that despite all the very real differences of opinion about social and political policies which this year has laid bare, we have survived as a people. Institutions have been challenged and even altered, but they remain. We really did ‘bend but not break.’

 I pray that if I am still writing in March 2022, that I will be able to write “Oh, what a year” and it will have a whole new meaning, a meaning that reflects how we became healthy as a nation, as a people, as church, because we were given the ability to understand that the cloud before us, that the fire that burns ahead, these are the light of God leading us safely through to 2022.

 “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.” Exodus 13.21 (3.13.21)