Lent Day 9: Uncertainty

I just had some blood drawn for my triennial (ahem) physical. Everything's gonna be fine, fine, fine.

Probably.

There's a forecast today for snow tomorrow. Six to ten inches, and 40 mph wind gusts! 

Of course, I remember when a "6" to 10" inches" forecast turned into 26"--or was it 42"? No one's really got it figured out just yet.

The past two years (almost to the day, now) have been a lesson in living with uncertainty, and it turns out it is hard. I remember when our congregation went into lockdown the week of March 15, 2020, assuming we would be back in church by Easter. While we worshiped together last Easter (2021) in our congregation's cemetery, Easter 2022 will be our first celebration of the resurrection in our sanctuary since Sunday April 21, 2019. 

The early months of lockdown were probably easier for me than they were for many others. I was fully engaged in learning how to create worship for a new medium (for me), for the online viewer. I was also engaged in figuring out how to Zoom and use MS Teams, not to mention learning how to successfully record at home and then send those recordings to our Media Manager. (Pro tip: what Apple calls a "vintage" laptop is probably not going to do the job.)

I did well during a period of uncertainty because I had specific, engrossing tasks geared towards an important outcome: keeping a congregation connected and spiritually fed during a time when it was not safe to gather in groups. 

Not everyone had that experience. I have witnessed the struggles of families in which a parent suddenly became their child/ children's teacher, with or without a teacher on Zoom, and I have heard stories about how excruciatingly hard that was, or how dispiriting, or even how impossible. I have seen young adults thrown into an unstructured, anxiety-filled time that was detrimental to their mental and physical health, and other young adults trying to do essential jobs, for inadequate pay, at great personal risk. I have witnessed some retirement-aged adults become withdrawn and isolated as the pandemic dragged on, and ebbed and flowed with seasons of severely heightened danger alternating with moments--but only moments-- of, "Oh hey, it's over! Back to normal."

Everything's gonna be fine, fine, fine.

At times of uncertainty, people of faith have some resources at our disposal. For one thing, we have a great prayerbook right in the middle of the Bible: the Book of Psalms. I will repeat here my very favorite quote of John Calvin:  

I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul;” for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of [human beings] are wont to be agitated. 

Having an emotion? There's a psalm for that. The psalm appointed for this Sunday is particularly wonderful.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?  ~Psalm 27:1

Uncertainty is so often about fear or anxiety. The chief difference between these two for me: Fear is about something specific. Anxiety is undifferentiated and global, because the "danger" feels so unknowable. Pandemic time has seen an enormous increase in anxiety-- in late 2020 people reported anxiety to their health care providers at a rate 62% higher than the previous year. 

The psalms can meet us in our state of anxiety, and, without giving us empty assurances about the specifics ("everything's gonna be fine, fine fine"), can nevertheless give us a sense of a firmer ground beneath us. "I believe," the psalmist sings, "I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." The "goodness of the Lord" is on plain view for us if we take care to look for it. I think of the people volunteering at food pantries. I think of the health care providers who never signed up for such a time of testing, but who nevertheless persist. I think of the people of God who are brokenhearted over a war nearly five thousand miles away. I think of the people who shovel for their older neighbors, and I think of the people who offer the shovelers hot cocoa or coffee.

I don't think everything is "fine, fine, fine." But I believe we can see the goodness of God, and that gives us a counterbalance for otherwise uncertain times. 

Today, for me, that is enough.