Time for an emoji--this one is for the kids (big kids too) or Since "Rona" Came to Town

                    👀😋😓😑😏😝

             As an almost 60 year old woman, I often feel foolish when I use an emoji at the end of a text message, but it just feels so good.  Sticking my tongue at my sister still makes me laugh.
         
            Given our current situation, with our schools closed, emojis may be a valuable way to share our expressions.

           I know as I watch my own grandchildren adjust to being at home, being taught by their parents, being away from their friends and understanding this new word "Corona" that they may very well want to just put a big poop emoji next to all their comments.  For those without contact with young people--the poop emoji is pretty popular.   How can they express themselves now that they are under the microscope of parents watching them watch videos, doing homework, and washing their hands?
 
          This is the perfect time to talk about how we are feeling with our children. It is okay to share with young people:
 I don't feel like getting off the couch either,
I feel a bit like crying too,
it is normal to be happy because we are together so much even though it feels weird at the same time, I miss our family,
I am worried,
 and I get scared too.

        Someone recently shared that they were in a group that referred to the Corona virus simply as "Rona" like a person.  They asked each other "What does "Rona" have you doing today?"  Like it or not we are in a relationship with this virus and relationships can be complicated.  I imagine children are struggling with this unknown, unseen virus that has upended their world.  It may help just a bit if they could talk about "Rona" in a way that allowed them to say how mad, scared or even happy they are since "Rona" came to town.  Maybe we could all benefit from sharing our Rona emoji--😫
         
            No matter our age, sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words--even if it is an emoji.
     

       

“Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.”.

2 Thessalonians 16-17

Hebrews 11:3 “It is by faith that we understand that the universe was created by God's word, so that what can be seen was made out of what cannot be seen.”

            Each spring I wait for these snowdrops to show up.  What I see for only a short time goes unseen for most of the year.  This is a time when we may find ourselves missing what we are used to seeing.  Our family, our friends, our favorite restaurants, our places of business, and even our churches might go unseen for a time.  But God's creative hand is still at work.

--What new thing waits in us?

--What unseen thing has been waiting to be revealed, revealed in the silence and in the empty spaces?

--What might we notice as we walk through our neighborhoods with the air almost dense with solitude?

Without snow to shovel, and with plenty of electricity and hot water, our bodies move awkwardly through space and time. Anxiety, fear, and even anger move like electrical currents, zipping and zapping, this way and that through our brains. Many of us feel like we are on the edge of something...but what?

Our grandson was born early and he was a fragile little peanut. On one of his first outings, my sister was with us. I was walking, carrying him down a flight of stairs and that walk was one of the longest walks in my life. Each step took effort and seemed to bring me no closer to the end. The floored loomed before me, daring me not to trip. My arms felt like they belonged to someone else as they cradled the baby.

Once I stepped off the last step, I paused and let go of my breath, I was unaware that I had stopped breathing. My sister looked at me and said; "I was so worried you would drop him." She has walked each step with the same caution and worry even though her arms were empty.

Now we have six children between us, most very close in age, and I can promise you that we never took a walk like that with them. We swung them, we held them with one arm, and we even let 4-year-old arms hold new born babies, they may have been sitting but those arms were only 4-years-old!

There was something new in that walk, something we did not anticipate, being a grandparent was not the same as being a parent. The value of time and life have a different meaning. It all goes so quickly.

The snowdrops usually come before I am ready. I have not raked the pine needles away and to be honest the weather may be too chilly for me to spend much time admiring them. When all is said and done, they will have gone before I know it. All the waiting, including the waiting I didn't even know I was doing, is worth the first sighting of them. It is all worth the skip in my heart and the promise of more to come; the unseen is brewing just below the surface.

       As we wait for life to get back to normal, consider this a time of tilling the familiar soil for new growth.  A time to prepare our hearts and minds for what is unseen.

       Alana Levandoski sings: "Behold I make all things new--God unseen is taking form--Let there be light--Let there be light."

            

Lent has begun and it started as it always does, for me at least--with a smudge of ashes across the forehead. As a pastor I have the privilege of smudging the shape of a cross while saying the words; “From dust you were born and to dust you shall return.”

This past Ash Wednesday, as we gathered around a fire, I walked among the people and shared this act before landing on the forehead of a young parishioner. As I finished making the cross and saying these powerful words, he said; “I want more.” So I moved my dusty finger slowly down his forehead and one could feel the Holy Spirit in that moment. When I moved my hand away he whispered; “I don’t know why.”

Almost 16 years of ministry and it took a child to verbalize what so many of us feel--we don’t know why. We don’t know why we want more, more of Jesus, more of the sun, more of the sky, more mud, more trees, more waves, more birds singing, really more of anything that connects us to the Creator of the earth from which we come and will one day return.


The Quaker hymn “How can I Keep from Singing” by Henry S. Burrage sings:

My life goes on in endless song

Above earth’s lamentation

I hear the real, though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear its music ringing

It sounds and echo in my soul

How can I keep from singing?

This is the mystery of faith that we cannot express--the contradictions of joy in the midst of sorrow, peace in the midst of loneliness, and the hymn that stirs inside us even on the most discouraging of days.