June 3, 2020
COVID-19 has been on everyone’s mind for the past three months, only to be eclipsed by the needless and abhorrent death of George Floyd and the resulting rioting that is sweeping across our country. It’s enough to put us into emotional overload, so I thought it would be good tonight to shift gears for awhile and reflect on other matters.
Yesterday evening, family members gathered at Linda’s sister’s home to sing Happy Birthday to her. I won’t disclose her age, other than to say she has entered a new decade. We hung around afterward, talking. More than thirty years of history with her and her husband Dennis, added to the peacefulness of the woods, made for a soul-refreshing hour of conversation and fellowship. The two of them live pretty much off the grid, with no electricity. Their lamps are propane, they heat with wood, their water is from a spring fed hydraulic ram, as they live in the log house Dennis built more than 25 years ago. Whenever I need a break from the craziness and pace of modern life, I head to the woods, a cup of coffee, and a sit-down with them.
For the first time in nearly three months, our Wednesday pastor’s prayer group met face to face. Zoom meetings are OK, but there is a dynamic present when we’re together that cannot be replicated through media. In his trilogy on the Powers, Walter Wink discusses the language of power in the New Testament. His premise is that human experience hasn’t changed much in millennia; we have technology, think we are more sophisticated, but human beings still love, hate, grieve, and ponder the mysteries of life and death as they have done since before the beginning of recorded time. Then he asks the question, “What did First Century people experience that caused them to speak of angels and demons, of as St. Paul put it, “principalities, powers, rulers of darkness in heavenly places? And what language do we use to describe those same experiences?” The experiences are the same; the language is different. We describe these events in political, social, psychological, or educational language, where they used religious language.
We still use the old language occasionally. We speak of “corporate spirit,” or referencing recent events, “mob spirit” or “mob mentality.” Wink states that such things as mob spirit are real; when the mob disperses, so does the spirit that moved it to action. The same people meeting via Zoom would never have caused the destruction that resulted from their being together physically. If that is true for mobs of young people looting and burning businesses, why should it be any less true in a positive sense when God’s people gather together? The Spirit of God and the Presence of Jesus Christ is palpable when we are actually together in a way that is not possible when we are apart and seeing each other only through a screen. Being together this morning was like streams in the desert, and I drank deeply in the real presence of Christ.
Today I fired up my backhoe and dug the hole to plant my new apple tree. I’ve been working on the digger for the past month, getting a broken bracket welded, then having to buy a new float for the carburetor, and fiddle and adjust, fiddle and adjust. It’s not running perfectly, but I got the hole dug and the tree planted before bumping it with the hoe and breaking the top off it. I bound it together and hope it’ll survive, but I’m living proof that a college education doesn’t make you any smarter in the practical matters of life. Nevertheless, I am thankful tonight for a wife who only snickered a little when I told her of my misfortune. At almost fifty years together, I guess she’s still a keeper.
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