A daughter with a child on her pant-leg longing with arms outstretched to simply hold her aging and ailing mom – through a dangling shower curtain!
A grieving husband stressed and exhausted thanking a critical care nurse as he reaches out to him in consolation after the loss of his wife. “Thank you for holding her cell to her ear for as long as you did. I know she was weak, but we DID connect and for that I can never thank you enough - for that moment.”
A stressed management team pouring over numbers, seeing the impact of diminished resources on their workers – layoffs, decreased pay for their worried families, lives now with less, fear and sleepless hours.
We are surrounded with the images. We are impacted by them.
I write to you on Good Friday 2020, the beginning hours of the most sacred days of the year for so many of us. A time to remember the Passion, Death and Glory of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. But wait! Are you as confused as I am? What’s to celebrate? We can’t even go to church! What’s to rejoice really as we look around this year? Isn’t the mystery of Easter about coming together, celebrating blessing and bounty, gratitude for what Life brings us? Is God cluing in this year? There are no gatherings in a moment of social distancing; communion has been banned! Bounty? Are you kidding me? Have you checked out the store shelves at Sam’s Club and Costco over the last weeks? And with deaths in the tens of thousands, paranoia about the person across from you carrying the virus or leaving traces of contagion, what do we have to be thankful for about Easter?
God, where are You this year, honestly?!
This year, the mystery beginning on Good Friday is NOT a remembrance but a LIVING reality, a RE-PRESENTATION in our own current lives of the promises made to us long ago. Look around! Easter is happening all around us! Rejoice! WE are Passing Over in our living experiences and images from the impact of death and hopelessness to what matters most to God, the best of our human self! Don’t you see it?
A Loves Park business that immediately stops production lines of adhesives to manufacture needed mask protection to counter the spread of infection.
Confined neighbors organizing through available technology parades of local vehicles to wave to a 4-year-old who had her first birthday party cancelled.
Courageous health-care workers and first-responders who provide essential care and services at the risk of their own health: doctors, nurses and medical staff; workers in groceries and pharmacies; sanitation workers; and countless others who daily are aiding us in surviving this crisis.
In the end, isn’t this what we will all remember about this time? Not the numbers of those we have lost, but the singing doctor from the Mayo Clinic who made us smile and helped us to believe in the goodness of ourselves again. This IS the Living Face of Easter all around us and the Living God breathing into us regularly that which constitutes our insurmountable human spirit.
Battling fear and a loss of hope? Contact our office to schedule an appointment: www.restorerockford/appointments