THE SIMPLEST WAY TO GET RID OF A VIRUS [Su, 5-24-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Listening for the Spirit

THE SIMPLEST WAY TO GET RID OF A VIRUS   [Su, 5-24-20]

In one of my early churches, there was a very classy woman, who was married to a very un-classy man. He wasn’t a bad man but… it was just that they were such an unlikely couple. They lived in separate ends of their house, used different doors and driveways, in which they kept their separate cars. I knew her fairly well, because she was a regular at church. He did not come to church, but I had met him. He was nice enough, but not highly couth. I just couldn’t understand why she had married him in the first place.

I was young then, and not totally couth myself, so I just plain right out asked her, something I would have been more circumspect about when I was more experienced: Why did you marry him?

“It was the only way I could get rid of him,” she said.

This virus just won’t leave us alone. It keeps bugging us, wanting to live with us. Really, the only way we have to get rid of it—until the real scientists develop a vaccine or a cure—is to marry it. Then we can ignore it.

How? We don’t whine. We don’t protest. We don’t use it as cover to take advantage. We do the simple things—stay home, wear a mask, wash our hands, cooperate with the people who are trying to keep us safe, not those who are trying to exploit us for their own power gains.

The spirit is always in the simple things. Sometimes in the big, complicated things, too, but always in the simple things. The virus is in our house. So what?  Don’t give it the time of day. Live the life of Christ, just as we are called to do in any other time, viral or not.

JRMcF

BORING EXPLANATION YOU’VE PROBABLY READ BEFORE: As we began to “shelter in place,” some folks spoke of the need in this pandemic time for an online “daily devotional,” some spark to light the spirit. [“It only takes a spark to get a fire going…” One of the favorite camp songs of the teens in my church in the 1990s.]

 So, in addition to writing a 500 word column two or three times a week for Christ In Winter, I started writing a short, 200 word, “devotional” on the in-between days. Nothing fancy, just words to try to help us hear the Word in these strange and frightening times.