A Hard Week

Years ago I heard this, and I share it now even with its dated references because somehow to me it just fits our recent days.

A man was watching the news and was overcome with all the terrible things that were being reported. Wars competed for his attention with all sorts of natural disasters ranging from floods to drought. Disease and poverty seemed to be dominant themes. It was just too much. He was so depressed that he turned off his television and picked up the phone and dialed the number for “Dial-A-Prayer.” After a short wait, a voice came on the line with these words, “Build an ark.”

There are times when there is just more to life than it seems we can bear. For me this was one of those weeks. Between pandemics, wildfires, floods and political decisions that I cannot understand, all commented on in bitter twitter wars, it has been hard to hold things together. At base, our increasing divisions continue to haunt me.

We have reached a place where we are ready to criticize and view with suspicion almost everybody. As just one example, the vice president published on Twitter the she and her husband were praying for the people in the northeast who had just been devastated by the remnants of hurricane Ida. Immediately the responses were critical that the two of them had not prayed for a wide enough group of people. I have to admit that response set me back. Apparently, not even our prayers are sacred.

I use that as an example not to argue the politics, but to indicate the place where we are, and how that leaves us ill-equipped to deal with the perils that face us. This is especially true when we face days with a confluence of news events each of which would normally take up at least several days of attention, but are all crammed into a day or two of our experience.

Somehow the 8th chapter of the book of Romans come to mind yet again, (as it so often does), especially the question raised, “What do we say to this?” The writer answers his own question: “If God is for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” He goes on to list things like peril, tribulation, or sword, before affirming his assurance that in all things we are more than conquerors through the love of God made known in Christ Jesus. This, it seems to me, begins to offer a solution to our harried state of affairs. Somehow we need to recover several things that in my mind are related. 

First, we need to regain a sense of the holy. We can argue about names, and differences in rituals (which we often do to avoid the deeper claims of our beliefs), but a deeper sense of that which is beyond us calling us to more loving ways is essential. 

Second, we need to recover a sense of our common humanity. We need to remember that human beings share many common attributes. They would like to be happy. They would like to raise their children safely. They would like to have enough to eat. The list goes on. But we are losing track of that list, and the fact of its universality. Our scope of concern is too often narrowed down to me and mine. A view toward the common good is sadly becoming uncommon.

And so, ill-equipped, we face a hard week like this past one and the ones before that with all the attendant fears and disappointments. Notably there have been heroic efforts to ease the suffering, but those have taken place against the backdrop of the sniping at each other which has become such a characteristic of our internet age.

Administrators are warning that recovery from the natural disasters will take months, even years, and some peoples’ lives will never be healed. Further they are warning the the current pandemic might not go away, but rather be a part of life that we have to continue to deal with. These are things our quick fix mentality does not take too well. They are also warning that these are indications of needed significant changes to our ways of doing things so that we are not subject to such things in the future, another bit of news we are not particularly ready to hear. But hear them we must. And not just hear, but respond. And that response needs to be a faith-based sense of the greater good for all of creation.