God: "Can you hear Me now?"

It's Wednesday, March 18, 2020, and this would typically be our mid-week Bible study and choir practice evening. However, all of this containment effort has kept us pretty much cooped up. You don't realize how much you are normally on the go until you make a concentrated effort to curtail your activities. I suppose we have been about as hunkered down as we have ever been. This time we do have our Mr. Bentley as a new attraction to help us through these long days. I saw an image on Facebook where someone had taken the basketball bracket from March Madness, renamed it March Sadness and filled in the names of things you can do instead of watching the canceled tournament. It had things like dusting, watching TV, vacuuming, washing the car, cooking, cleaning the bathroom, and on and on. My grammar correction program really doesn't like the 'March Sadness' moniker. It wants me to change it to madness. It is not alone in terms of the millions who so look forward to seeing their favorite teams compete. And, those who do all the betting. Talk about a monumental change! But, that's just one event out of thousands that have been either canceled or rescheduled. I thought about all of this from God's perspective and it reminded me of that cell phone service commercial. Maybe God is saying to us all, "Can you hear Me now?"

I can remember when we would be threatened by a hurricane as a kid growing up. Hurricanes didn't typically reach into the part of Louisiana where we lived, however, we could at times get inundated with rain and some minor flooding. We kids were inside waiting. Waiting for the go-ahead signal that would allow us to get outside and play in the rain and to swim around in the flooded yard and street. Once mom said we could we flew out of the house and flung ourselves into the waters. We were kids. We didn't have any concerns about what might be in the waters. You know. Snakes of all kinds who had been displaced from their regular habitat. Diseases and debris like broken glass. We were focused on having us a good time. And, we did. Until we were so tired we went in and collapsed on the floor. We may have seen a snake or two passing by but we didn't bother them and they didn't bother us. Fast forward to adulthood where we wouldn't think about thinking about allowing our grandkids to risk doing something like that. Didn't you hear what they said on the news? We had better all just stay in and do our best to stay safe. While that makes sense, when it becomes the overarching rule of our life, well, we lose something. We do. We really do.

As we wrestle with the worldwide pandemic, here are some relevant words from the recognized Christian scholar and apologist, C. S. Lewis, (November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963). This short essay was about how believers should live in the atomic age, however, there appears to be great insight and application to our current situation: ~ "In one way, we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. 'How are we to live in an atomic age?' I am tempted to reply: 'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.' In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds." ~ Lots of guidance in his words. Amen. ....More later.