Tsunami

Late yesterday afternoon the governor of New Hampshire issued a stay-at-home order effective 11:59 tonight.  We here in the Granite State will be joining tens of millions of others and so many more around the world in what amounts to a lock down.  The excitement never stops these days, does it?

We've been living with this coronavirus for most of this year.  I recall sitting in a hospital ethics committee meeting in late January discussing what would be the right and prudent thing for our community's medical center to do.  This was a good bu pretty generic conversation.  The reported cases in mainland China at that point amounted to a few hundred.  The threat was real but barely visible.  We talked about the need for the hospital to be addressing this before the crisis broke.  Fortunately, they did.  But our local health care providers are still facing a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.  The tsunami is going to hit. 

All of this has me wondering.  Why do we not prepare when we know something is going to happen?  Why do we hope the trouble will just go away?  Sometimes it does, like internet scams; sometimes it doesn't, like the tornado that lands in one's community.  The Boy Scouts motto is "Be Prepared."  All too often we are not.  I think part of this is that our brains are wired to deal with what we think of as "normal."  On many levels, this makes sense.  We seek to bring order to our chaotic lives, to introduce patterns that will help us make sense of things. But the truth is this: the chaos is always out there.  It is always lingering.  It is one thing to keep it at bay and in its place. It's another to ignore it.

During this Lenten season we recall the trials of Jesus, the chaos he confronted, the tsunami that washed over him.  And then we remember he prevailed.  He conquered death itself.   That's good news.  But we should always remember that their is no resurrection without crucifixion.  Let's pray that we will be alert in the coming days, that we will draw on God's strength and comfort, and that we will remember to treat others as Jesus treated us.