The coronavirus pandemic has radically changed my life and the life of the whole world. March Madness is redefined. Schools, businesses, theaters, sports arenas, houses of worship… closed. The changes keep coming and are escalating. Social distancing is the new norm. Self-isolating has new meaning for me, for you, for the entire world. Old habits suddenly must halt and be transformed.
Fasting has long been a Lenten practice, a chosen sacrifice to encourage opening to the gifts of new life – Springtime awakening on Earth and in the Spirit. This year I chose to fast from technology in new ways. Now I must fast from being around others and actually embrace technology in new ways in order to be connected.
There is a deeper more radical fasting needed, too. As I fast from going to work, weddings, shopping, and most everything that involves personal encounters, there is a call to see with new eyes. How is God at work in this pandemic? What divine possibilities are present? What divine revelation might be coming? Most importantly, how can I see more clearly?
The season of Lent is a time of remembering the story at the core of Christian faith. Calvary, the place of torture and death, is also the place of transformation and new birth into a resurrection reality. In suffering, indeed in all circumstances, there is hope. There is the promise of resurrection. Essentially this is because of God’s true creative nature, a cosmic force that is always actively working for good.
Today’s gospel story of the man born blind* is a teaching about this. Jesus makes mud from his saliva and soil and sends the man to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. The man’s eyes are then able to see. The subsequent conversations are about beliefs about sin as the cause of the man’s blindness and belief in the cause of his new sight.
Before the man born blind received his sight, the disciples raised the subject of the cause of his blindness. They asked Jesus who had sinned, the man or his parents. Jesus said neither: “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” This shift in perspective evokes an important question for this Lenten season in 2020. What is God up to? How might the involuntary fasting required by the coronavirus pandemic alert us to God’s healing action? How can I, how can we open our eyes to see God at work?
–Ann Dean, Dayspring Church
Reflection Questions
- What possibilities do you see for deepening connections in what is
required for personal distancing? - How is your prayer changing?
- What resurrection hope for our whole Earth community might you pray for now?
