COVID-19: Another Perspective

We are on day two of schools being closed and all other activities limited or stopped completely to slow the spread of COVID-19, a novel coronavirus.  People are hoarding groceries and toilet paper, facing extreme illness and mortality, unemployment or crazy overtime, decreased personal interaction, no childcare, and no idea when or where it will end.  Fears for our personal health and for those we love abound.

But, I just keep coming back to what Naomi said.

“I’ve survived the worst thing of my life.”

Naomi is a newly bereaved wife with four young children to raise.  She was one of the ones that didn’t stock up and knows this will pass, as most things do.  She recognizes her outlook on everything has changed, and in this case, that is a good thing.

Naomi inspires me and makes me think about the beatitudes.  Matthew 5:4 to be exact.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

When normalcy, pleasure, fantasies, and distractions melt away because of a worldwide pandemic, a terminal illness, or the death of someone you love, maybe part of the comfort promised in these mystifying verses is that the fear of anything worse ceases to exist.  Your worst fear is behind you and you’ve survived it.  And you know this.   

This gives me hope for those who have faced unimaginable loss and who persevere in living, as well as hope for the rest of us.  Especially now. 

As I ponder the most likely impact of COVID-19 on my immediate family, my thoughts turn to food. It is embarrassing even to admit this considering the threat to life itself, but the shortages tell the truth.  It is on everyone’s mind.  The canned food aisle won the most-ransacked-award when I went shopping a few days ago.  Except for canned peas.  There were plenty of those.  (Who knew?!)

Canned peas aside, we eat well. We could pare down a lot and be just fine.  But, it makes me think about the divide between what we have and what we actually need to live.  This divide is what makes us panic over empty shelves and stocking delays.  We are used to having way more than we need.  We don’t know what we can get by with, and we don’t want to know. 

But, there is a group of people who do know what they need because that is all they have, and all they are used to having.  There is no surplus and no division between have and need,  and yet, an entire kingdom seems to have their name on it.  They are called the poor in spirit.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 

   Matt 5:3

Being poor and poor in spirit are not necessarily, nor always the same thing.  But, our poor are often poor in spirit, and I am thinking about them.  They are used to limited supply.  Not because the shelves are empty, but because their wallets are.  Food stamps and food banks routinely remind them they are beneficiaries.  People at the mercy of other people.  Making room for blessings not earned is mandatory.  Going without, a way of life.

Mother Teresa said, “Even God Himself cannot fill what is already full.”  Well, guess what?  We are making room.  Our circumstances demand it.  As we tackle the uncertainties of living day-to-day in a scenario we never could have imagined, our shelves and calendars have emptied, but our capacity to survive, serve, bless, love, and receive is growing (if we let it).

Amidst all of the unknowing, my hope is that those who can recognize themselves in the beatitudes will find the comfort and the kingdom they have been promised — and that the rest of us can learn something from their hard-won perspective secured along the way.

 God be with us.