ONE GLOBAL INTERRUPTION – THE INTERRUPTED LIFE XV by Eleanor Shepherd

Our family loves to get together to celebrate birthdays. This week my daughter had a birthday, but how to celebrate with her posed some interesting challenges. We were not able to go into her house, nor were she and her family able to come to ours. We settled for an option that adhered to the Coronavirus directives and still enabled us to be together. We drove to her house with our gifts and placed them on her front porch where she could pick them up and take them inside. Then she and her family brought their lunch out on the porch and we got our folding chairs out of the car and placed them more than two metres from the porch. We took our packed lunch out of the bag and ate it and were able to have a conversation together without any personal contact. It was a birthday celebration that we will likely talk about for years. 

When I began writing this series on The Interrupted Life for this blog just a little over a year ago, I had no idea that all of us were going to experience a huge life interruption by a virus called Covid-19. I could not imagine the way that this pandemic would bring to a halt our crazy busy lives and our bustling communities turn to ghost towns. Unexpectedly our electronic communication devices have become our links to one another.  

We are facing a reality we have never experienced before. We find ourselves anxious and

apprehensive. We do not know if we, or those who are dear to us will be felled by this virus. We hope all our efforts are going to help us to escape or at least enable our health care system to keep functioning effectively.

In addition, many of us face huge economic challenges with the disappearance or significant scaling back of occupations. Lack of public support eliminates the entertainment industry. A dried up market threatens the precarious balance of knife-edge solvency for small businesses. Our governments who have treated the health care crisis as the emergency it is have provided guidelines and as necessary, sanctions to try to curb the impact of the virus on our lives, seeking to preserve our livelihoods with financial aid.

We continue to reel as we try to figure this out in our spirits. Is this a punishment from God for the way we have been living or is it a curse from the Enemy who wants only our destruction or is it something else entirely? In searching for answers people come to all kinds of conclusions and none can be proved right or wrong. I find that for me, this is where my faith comes in to play.

This crisis reminds me that my faith has not always been as primordial as I would like it to be. Hugh Palmer, the Rector of All Souls Anglican Church in London, England reminded us of this in a recent service. As Christians we have relied upon the economy and our finances instead of focusing on God as “our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” 

I love the story of the elderly preacher who, in failing health, was visited by a younger minister who asked, “How is your faith holding up now when you are able to do so few of the things that brought joy to your life?” 

The minister explained that for years he had tried faithfully to carry his faith and now the time had come for his faith to carry him. 

Many of us have carried our faith through the sometimes-significant interruptions, in our lives. We have not been alone but have in these interruptions plunged into new depths in our understanding of the faithfulness of God. Now when our whole world is interrupted we find that the faith we have carried can carry us. We will eventually be on the other side of Covid-19. Our lives may never be exactly as they were before, but we will have a greater appreciation of the One in whom we have learned to trust. 

Word Guild Award
2011

Word Guild Award
2009

Eleanor served as a Salvation Army officer for thirty years in Canada and France. Her writing has merited several awards. The Hot Apple Ciderstory won an Award of Merit in 2009. In 2011 her book, More Questions than Answers, Sharing Faith by Listeningwon The Word Guild Award in Christian Leadership. Christianity Today awarded it a four star rating. In 2012 she won Short Feature award for a Breakthrougharticle. An Award of Merit in 2016 came from The Canadian Church Press. In 2018 her Personal Experience story won in Christmas withHot Apple Cider.

                                                         

                                                                   Word Guild Award
                                                                  2018