In my neck of the Pacific Northwest woods, today is the final day of school before Spring Break.
The math teachers will all have unit ending tests (to avoid dealing with the bubbling excitement in their students), the English teachers will have silent reading as a plan for the day, the teachers of humanities will plan on videos for each class, the PE teachers will plan on dodgeball and the classes of practical application (shop, foods, textiles, film, etc.) … well, if they were wise they would call a substitute in for the day.
Today, though, my thoughts are somewhere else …
My thoughts are on this last day before Spring Break, two years ago. When the WHO (World Health Organization) declared Covid 19 a Pandemic. When things were changing … ALL OVER THE WORLD.
Words like pandemic, Covid, unprecedented, precautions, closures and cancellations became part of our everyday vernacular.
And, I wonder, two years later
what have we learned?
Have we become stronger or stressed?
Has our faith or our fear grown?
Have we grown in compassion or a critical spirit?
Have we become better or bitter?
I can only speak for myself, when I say, hard times are … hard! They squeeze me and the results are often not the most positive reactions. I can easily lean towards criticism, sarcasm, doubt, fear and even superiority.
And these past two years have been … hard.
But, one thing I have learned is that God does not allow anything to be useless in our lives … even the hard stuff. So …
what have we learned?
Here is what I hope we, as human souls have learned, during this unprecedented time :
- to number our days … to not waste a day, a breath that God has given us
- to look at our productivity differently … that doing is not the same as being
- to not fill our calendars … more things to do, places to go do not make life better
- to care for our neighbors … to check in on those who might be isolated
- to say thank-you … to health care workers, grocery store shelf stockers, delivery workers
- that there is more than one way to do a task … schooling and working from home can work (and, for some, might work better)
- to be okay with our own company … maybe even enlightened by who God made us to be
- to try new things … make bread, do a puzzle, paint a wall, try a new exercise routine
- to love those under our roofs … who we are called to love
- to appreciate the privilege of physical, corporate worship … maybe something many of us have taken for granted and even lost the love of this togetherness
Though the pandemic has yet to have been declared over, though anything can happen to reignite this viral spread, I think many of us are feeling like our lives are slowly returning to a more normal state. I do hope that what we move towards is not how it was, but a new and improved version … one with margin in our days, appreciation for others, an openness to trying new things and a renewed reliance on our God.
itsawonderfilledlife 