Staying in Touch with God and Each Other During this Imposed Interim
“Grace and peace” are words that Paul often employed when writing his scattered flock, and they seem so appropriate today because we are indeed a “scattered flock.” The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused major changes in the ways we go about our normal lives. One of these changes is the way that we will need to do church for the next few days and perhaps weeks. Instead of physically gathering for shared moments of inspiration through teaching, preaching, praying and singing, we have been called to separate ourselves for the good of our own being and the community at large. I am grateful for our pastor and church leadership who have wisely led out in helping us to be the church in these most unusual days.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who faced such a catastrophic isolation, wrote some of his more memorable words while imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II. In words eerily applicable to this separation, he wrote: “Blessed are those who are alone in the strength of the community. Blessed are those who preserve community in the strength of solitude.”
During the next week or so we will undertake the spiritual discipline of preserving the community in our aloneness. To assist with this, we will post a meditation each day in hopes of uniting our hearts and minds in shared prayer. The spiritual scaffolding for this venture will be the beatitudes given by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. With his words and our devotions may we move together through this most anxious and trying time.
In Christ,
Mike
