Dear Church Family,
As we approach the 1-year anniversary of when Covid19 started touching our lives directly, I have been meditating on endurance and perseverance. I remember the early days of shelter-in-place orders and my own over-the-top ideas about what I could do and how long I could keep it up. I honestly thought I could record an inspiring video every day, a song or story or meditation to share. That lasted about three or four days. But we are nearing day 350, depending on how exactly you count it, and although some of our first ideas about how we would get through are fading, we have found other things that work. We know we are not at the end yet, but as case counts drop it seems that perhaps we really can see the end of this horrible experience.
We can endure a lot if we are properly supported. We can keep going for a long time if we have hope, and a sense of love and connection. Some people may say “God won’t give us more than we can handle,” which I think is an outright lie, but on the flip side God does also give us a lot of ways to seek support. Covid19 was more than we could handle; the half-million deaths here in the US attest to that fact. It was more than we could handle, but as we lived through it we learned to lean on one another, to connect with one another virtually, to express ourselves in different ways, to listen to scientists, to appreciate our essential workers, and to mourn and lament together. We learned more about what we could handle, and how best to try to handle it. As we still have a long way to go, we will continue to call on these learnings.
On Thursday I sat down for lunch, as many of you probably also did, with a TV playing in the background. TV at a meal is uncommon for us, but it was not an ordinary day. NASA was busy that day, landing an incredible new rover on Mars. I loved watching the NASA teams communicate with one another to get everything lined up for the rover’s descent. I loved hearing calls and questions from young students watching the landing. And I really appreciated the name of the rover: Perseverance. In a year like this one, what a perfect name for such a big group project. I can only imagine how hard it was for all the NASA teams to get used to remote work and reconfigure their work stations for Covid safety. I can only imagine how they kept working even through the grief and loss we all experienced as the pandemic raged on. But they did, and on Thursday their smiles were visible behind their masks as they announced the mission a success.
A verse from Galatians reminds me not to give up, using a gardening metaphor: “let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time if we do not give up.” The garden in front of my manse is sprouting fava beans and lettuces and tiny radish seedlings. They are appreciating the sunshine and rain and warmth. So, too, hope is sprouting and we can see its growth on the way. So don’t give up – not until the garden is harvested, the rover is landed, and the pandemic is eradicated. Use whichever metaphor you like, but don’t grow weary.
Every Blessing,
Talitha