A Time to Embrace

I stood alone in the grocery aisle selecting bananas.  Over the intercom I heard, for maybe the seventy-fifth time in the last hour, “Please maintain a distance of at least six feet…” 

We keep hearing the same words.  This is new.  We are weeks in, but newness continues to seep into the monotony of days at home, doesn’t it? 

We feel it when we tie on our cloth masks to go to the grocery store, our only time outside the house for the week.  The harsh newness catches like a hard-earned breath when we realize we haven’t been physically near a person outside our immediate family in close to six weeks.  When my growing too fast boy and I left the Texas Panhandle at the end of Spring Break, we hugged everyone goodbye.  Six weeks ago.  What seems like a lifetime ago. 

None of us have done THIS before.  It’s easy for us – and by us I mean me, and maybe you feel it, too – to slip into a feeling of constant anxious alarm.  But, wait.

Several weeks ago, I saw an image of this poem reflecting a story similar to the 1918 flu epidemic.  The poem image posted alongside was of two women, in long period dress with masks tied to their wide brimmed hats. 

Earlier this week, I also saw this story of the teacher, Eleanor Abbott, who invented the board game “Candy Land” during the polio outbreak. (Candy Land was Invented for Polio Wards, The Atlantic, July 2019)

My mind keeps coming back to these two small glimpses of history.  They’ve offered an odd comfort.  While it’s true nothing like the last weeks is common and familiar, and it doesn’t help to compare our troubles to another, it does provide comfort to know others have walked a path that’s even a little similar before.

Solomon, in Ecclesiastes, his sober book of wisdom, writes in chapter 1, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Sickness has ravaged populations.

Hardship has shaken strongholds.

Grief has laid open hearts.

Friends, this time is hard – for almost everyone, and for so many different reasons we couldn’t name them if we tried.  But God is still good.  He is still God “from everlasting to everlasting.” (Psalm 90) Nothing is new… to Him. 

Solomon goes on to say in chapter 3, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” Because it’s a familiar verse, many of us can probably recite part of this – “a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance….”

But one verse caught my eye.

“a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain”

Did you catch it?  Yes, the grass grows greener, the flowers bloom and the temperatures rise.  Yes, spring is underway, and summer will be here quickly.  But soon, it will be a time to embrace again.  And when it is, I’ll be ready – with a big, awkwardly-long hug, and a cup of coffee waiting to share at a little table in a noisy coffee shop.

Will it be the same as before?  No, I think not, but we can find comfort in knowing that newness won’t be new for God either.

Hugs and Blessings – Bethany