TOUCHING IN A PANDEMIC TIME [SU, 2-21-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

TOUCHING IN A PANDEMIC TIME                     [SU, 2-21-21]

I’m still going through old files. I am surprised at how much response I received to a little half-page piece I wrote in “The Christian Century” in 1991. It was called “The Touching Time.” It appeared later in my books, Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole and The Strange Calling.

Wait. Let me take back that “surprised.” It was not surprising that people responded to it, because its theme, of the way we are healed by touch, is universal. Certainly, in this pandemic time, this time without touching, we understand that better than we ever have before.

I was still undergoing cancer when I wrote it, still thinking that I might not live more than another year or two. In the midst of that, one of my oldest friends, Bill White, drove a hundred miles to come touch me.

I look now at the dozens of letters I received…

…one from Ralph Steele, my District Superintendent when I graduated seminary and started campus ministry. He very graciously said “I remember so well your coming to The Terre Haute District with your energies and creative ideas. Your fine intellect has stimulated all of us.” Poor Ralph. He spent so much of his DS years dealing with the fallout from my energies and ideas and intellect!

…one from a pastor in MN, who scribbled a note of thanks of thanks on his church bulletin while have a cup of coffee at a Perkins Pancake House.

…one from a cousin who was suddenly awakened in her church’s worship service when the pastor started quoting me by name and read the whole piece as part of his sermon.  

…so many just from folks who just wanted to say that they were encouraged and strengthened by it.

As I prayed the last time with another friend, Bob Butts, shortly before he died, I thought of Bill White--how he touched me, held hands with me as he prayed with and for me. I wanted to do that with Bob, but we had been six months into virus isolation at that time. We weren’t even supposed to be in the same room, but he was on the sofa, and I was in a chair on the other side, so we prayed that way, him struggling to hear, me struggling to find the words that would cross the space between us, words that wouldn’t even be necessary if we could just hold hands.

I think that’s why scripture writers refer to God’s “everlasting arms.” When we can’t touch one another directly, we can rely on God to do it for us.

John Robert McFarland