It’s true, we’re all in the
pandemic together. The definition of a world-wide epidemic is an infectious ‘something’
in many corners of the world at once. Pandemic is both a noun and an adjective,
a thing and a descriptor. But in my mind, it is also a verb, because actions
and consequences come with it.
I awoke to a song
line very early on Saturday morning, the tune in my head, “Will you be my
refuge?” Carrie Newcomer’s CD collection A Permeable Life finally arrived in the mail after a long wait. I’ve been listening until I can almost sing along. The
lyrics to this song, Haven, are on another album though. She’s asking God to be
her haven in the storm, asking for direction and “holding me up” until she can
continue on herself.
My friend in
Colorado has her family-prescribed limitations and her adult kids get her
groceries. A friend in Vancouver is watchful, too, since she’s just gone
through surgery for cancer. Maryann and her husband John, in Nova Scotia, have their adult daughter
with them from a group home at this time. Nova Scotians have also suffered
numerous and unspeakable tragedies in the past few months. So many of them must
be crying out to God for solace in these circumstances.
Carrie’s words
float through my mind again, a “haven in the storm.” I like that picture of a
quiet place where I can go when the world around me is crazy and mind-boggling.
Poet Luci
Shaw said in a recent
Renovaré webinar about creating in chaos, “God will honour our prayers of
lament.” We’ve heard laments from many corners.
If we, in privilege, can live
and move around in our homes and on our properties, Carolyn Arends also recognized there are people who’ve lost jobs,
whose lives are anything but comfortable right now. I think, too, of people who
have died of covid, or other illnesses, and their families cannot hold a funeral
or cry and weep on a friend’s shoulders.
Andrew Peterson, song writer and recording artist, said (on the
webinar) that he was told during a time of great difficulty that God can take
it when we cry out against him. Even the psalmists cried out at unfairness, but
still they surfaced at the end with some thread of hope that kept them going.
We have that hope in God that will carry us through these days. A haven in the
storm, I like that term. Thank you, Carrie.
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