Just before I left to finish my last year of seminary, long ago, I asked Cheri to marry me.  It was wonderful and romantic, and then I drove off to spend the next year, 1200 miles away from my new fiancé.  We ended up doing “social distancing” before it was popular!  Remember – there was no such invention as a cell phone. Every Wednesday evening after 11 p.m., I would grab my MCI phone card, and call Cheri, and for an hour we would sweetly miss each other. She would call me on Saturday to do the same. In between times, since we also had no concept of an email, I would empty my heart in a daily love letter. I expect we subsidized the postal service that year.  The good news is that we survived being apart, and 40 years later, I still enjoy hearing her voice on the phone – although it’s always much nicer face-to-face!

I’ve wondered, as we have been living through this interesting and horrible time, whether one of the greatest dangers we might face as God’s people is that we would learn how to disconnect from one another. After all, when this is over; we might be satisfied in NOT being together. Instead, we permanently distance ourselves socially from the body of Christ. My prayer is that certainly, our love for God and one another would keep that from happening. However, I know that it will require our intentional fondness for one another, and to regularly recall the joy of being together, even while we are apart for a time. 
 
 One of the ways, of course, that we maintain our connection is when we make the efforts of “working together, separately.” We communicate frequently and find ways in which we may still serve as the voice and arms of Christ to our community, bound together in love, but separated for safety’s sake. I have been humbled and blessed to hear so many stories of our congregations and pastors using their creativity to reach out, connect and care for those who truly have no one else and who need so much.

That’s the role of the Christian. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus says – and he means it. It is our work and call not to let something, even so, wicked as a virus, keep us from shining that light in those dark places, lonely places, and needy places that Christ directs us to. I know there are times, even now, when we might want to claim the lament of Lamentations, where life is described as our being pressed down into the ashes, or choking on bitterness, or even feeling like our hope, during this time, seems to have taken a holiday. We frankly don’t know when all of this will end. 

However, we need to read Lamentations 3: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases – His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning – great is Your faithfulness! God, who has cared for us even up to now, will certainly bring the morning, and with it, our opportunity to rejoice in God’s faithfulness and steadfast love. This is the time; this is the day to claim our faith in Christ and to live connected most powerfully through the Spirit of God, sharing what we have with the world that needs our love. 

And wash your hands…