Sunday, February 19, 2023
Sunday Reflection: What has been lost
Today I have a piece in the Waco paper (you can read that here) and am also giving a sermon at First Covenant Church, and they are basically about the same thing: What we have lost in the pandemic.
As the COVID virus has become more of a seasonal disease like the flu than an existential threat to society, we are entering the post-pandemic era. That seems like it should be a time of accounting for what we lost, what went right and wrong, but right now people would rather just not think about it.
That's not healthy. I've always been struck by how much of the Bible is about recounting failure and loss; there's even a whole Book of the Bible titled "Lamentations," after all. It seems to be part of a spiritual cycle. As long as the recognition of loss is paired with a determination to go forward, it's probably necessary.
But we're having none of it, even as the pandemic has restructured so much of the world around us. Downtowns are dying, and it is uncertain how work-at-home will change us. The social net that connects us was strained as it is, but COVID accelerated the fraying of its cords. The toll in human fatalities-- well over a million people in the US-- is terrible, but there was a subtler loss in our connections to community institutions like schools, clubs, and churches.
The reason I care is because the first step of healing is knowing the shape and size of the wound. And we are not close, yet, to that first step.
