I heard these words spoken by Chris Brooks during the online service for Kairos. I keep thinking about his definition of white privilege– if it’s not my problem, then it’s not a problem at all.

During these times, some are more at risk than others. Some face greater challenges. Some are being inconvenienced while others are fighting for their very lives.

It’s easy to get caught up in the prevalent mode of panic that has pervaded our culture and forget that God is still in charge. He’s still working all things together for our good and His glory.

May these words wash over you and become your prayer for the days ahead:

“May we who are merely inconvenienced
     Remember those whose lives are at stake.
May we who have no risk factors
     Remember those most vulnerable.
May we who have the luxury of working from home
     Remember those who must choose between preserving their health or making their rent.

May we who have the flexibility to care for our children when their schools close
     Remember those who have no options.

May we who have to cancel our trips
     Remember those that have no safe place to go.
May we who are losing our margin money in the tumult of the economic market
     Remember those who have no margin at all.
May we who settle in for a quarantine at home
     Remember those who have no home.
As fear grips our country,
     let us choose love.
During this time when we cannot physically wrap our arms around each other,
     Let us yet find ways to be the loving embrace of God to our neighbors.

Amen”  (Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich).

Ok, this one’s a bit lengthy. I give you forewarning in case your attention span is feeling a bit short this evening. This essentially says that the meek and mild Jesus that so many teach about today is not the Jesus of the Bible. Neither is Christianity a meek and mild faith for the fainthearted.

“Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as ‘a bad press.’ We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine — ‘dull dogma,’ as people call it.

The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man — and the dogma is the drama… This is the dogma we find so dull — this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and the hero. If this is dull, then what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting?

The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore — on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium.

We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certifying Him ‘meek and mild,’ and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand.

True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; he referred to King Herod as ‘that fox’; he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a ‘gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners’; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people’s pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb.

He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either” (Dorothy Sayers).

“God is our shelter and our strength.
    When troubles seem near, God is nearer, and He’s ready to help.
So why run and hide?
No fear, no pacing, no biting fingernails.
    When the earth spins out of control, we are sure and fearless.
    When mountains crumble and the waters run wild, we are sure and fearless.
Even in heavy winds and huge waves,
    or as mountains shake, we are sure and fearless.

A pure stream flows—never to be cut off—
    bringing joy to the city where God makes His home,
    the sacred site where the Most High chooses to live.
The True God never sleeps and always resides in the city of joy;
    He makes it unstoppable, unshakable.
    When it awakes at dawn, the True God has already been at work.
Trouble is on the horizon for the outside nations, not long until kingdoms will fall;
    God’s voice thunders and the earth shakes.
You know the Eternal, the Commander of heavenly armies, surrounds us and protects us;
    the True God of Jacob is our shelter, close to His heart.

Come, gaze, fix your eyes on what the Eternal can do.
    Amazing, He has worked desolation here on this battlefield, earth.
God can stop wars anywhere in the world.
    He can make scrap of all weapons: snap bows, shatter spears,
    and burn shields.
‘Be still, be calm, see, and understand I am the True God.
    I am honored among all the nations.
    I am honored over all the earth.’
You know the Eternal, the Commander of heavenly armies, surrounds us and protects us;
    the True God of Jacob is our shelter, close to His heart” (Psalm 46, The Voice).

I feel like a piece of my childhood died today. I have so many memories that stir up whenever I hear any one of Kenny Rogers’ songs. Hearing the news that he had passed away was like a punch to the gut.

I never met him and didn’t really know that much about him. I do know that he was an absolute legend, a country music maverick to forged his own musical path instead of following the trails of others who had gone before him.

He had a very distinctive sound built around an immediately recognizable voice that was both warm and worn. So many of his songs are iconic and are part of the fabric of the 70s and 80s.

One of my favorite songs he recorded is 20 Years Ago about a nostalgic look back on growing up in the 60s. I love these words:

“All my memories from those days come gather round me
What I’d give if they could take me back in time
It almost seems like yesterday
Where do the good times go?
Life was so much easier twenty years ago” (Daniel Eugene Tyler, Wood A Newton, Michael I Noble, Michael Christoper Spriggs).

“There is a different kind of prayer without ceasing; it is longing. Whatever you may be doing, if you long for the day of everlasting rest do not cease praying. If you do not wish to cease praying, then do not cease your longing. Your persistent longing is your persistent voice. But when love grows cold, the heart grows silent. Burning love is the outcry of the heart! If you are filled with longing all the time, you will keep crying out, and if your love perseveres, your cry will be heard without fail” (Augustine’s Expositions of the Psalms).

I can think of no better time than now for God’s people to pray without ceasing out of a longing that only God Himself could ever satisfy. Let us spur each other on to lives of ceaseless prayers of thanksgiving and supplication for those who suffer around the world with the longing that God in Jesus will soon come and restore all things to rights.

“They have taken the Lord out of his tomb and we do not know where they have laid him,” Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning.

Then there’s that last glorious chapter of Saint Luke, where Jesus says, “Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see.”

Yes, sometimes it is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ, especially in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow, and the joy of our calling assures us we are on the right path.

Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across the street, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park.

There are wars and rumors of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God’s continuing promise to us that he is with us always, with his comfort and joy, if we will only ask” (Dorothy Day, Selected Writings).

I made it to the seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy. He’s the last to play the Doctor in the classic Who series that ended in 1989.

Again, it’s a lot of campy fun. I even appreciate the companion Mel, who doesn’t always get a lot of love from Who fans. To me, she was the spunkiest of the companions since Zoe way back in the day.

To be sure, this incarnation of the series has some seriously 80’s moments, some serious overacting, and cheesy monsters. But it still makes me a bit sad that it couldn’t have carried on in that form for a few more years.

I confess that I’m a fan of all the Doctors and all the companions. I suppose I probably should be more picky, but I just can’t help it. I like ’em all.

Ok, so it’s not the best picture of Peanut ever. But it definitely communicates that Peanut is alive and well and coronavirus-free.

She is the ultimate master at self-quarantining. She’s had lots of practice of laying low and hiding out and disappearing into those wormholes there cats go so no one will ever find them.

I’m not making light of the serious pandemic that has taken so many lives. I’m bringing a moment of levity into a grave situation. I hope seeing Peanut in all her feline glory will bring a little joy into someone’s anxiety-ridden life.

Just for one day, I want to switch places and have her go off to work at 6:15 while I lounge around the house all day, eating and napping whenever I feel like it.

Lately with all the news about COVID-19 and the coronavirus, it feels like I’m living in an episode of The X-Files. I expect someone to pull back the proverbial curtain to find that dastardly Cigarette Smoking Man and his cronies behind it all.

There will be an extraterrestrial origin behind the virus with aliens intent on colonizing and repopulating the planet, wiping us out in the process.

It’s unprecedented. I have never experienced anything like this. It feels like I’m getting contradictory information all the time about the nature of the virus and whether or not we should shut everything down.

I keep coming back to the same Scripture. More accurately, God keeps bringing me back to a familiar tried and true promise found in Philippians 4:6-7:

“Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”

In the midst of all the uncertainties, I know that God is still the same yesterday, today, and forever. No bacteria or virus or pandemic or global scare could ever change that. That is where my hope lies.

I don’t claim to have mastered the art of calm. In fact, there are many times when I’m anxious and fearful instead of trusting. Still, even in those moments when my feelings seem to have full sway, I know God’s promise goes beyond what I feel.

In the words of Jesus, “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, NLT).

I saw these words written on the board in the room where we hold our Room in the Inn Bible studies. I couldn’t bring myself to erase it.

It’s a good word. If Satan can’t make you bad, he’ll make you busy. He’ll get you to screw up your priorities so that productivity becomes more important than people, and getting things done becomes more important than making a difference in your world.

It used to be that cleanliness was considered to be next to godliness. Now it’s busy-ness. It seems like if you’re rushing around all the time frantically trying to get three things accomplished all at once, you’re applauded by the world.

But God has a different set of rhythms. Slow down. Listen to Me. Come sit at my feet and learn. Take time to rest and recharge. Be still and know that I am God.

Sometimes, if you won’t make time for rest, your body will make it for you. So learn from the Sabbath and rest.