Day 213: The Pandemic in Fall and Winter

DAY 213

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic    

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

pastorrobert@paxpres.org

Week Thirty-one    Tuesday 13 October 2020

The Pandemic in Fall and Winter

“The deadliest month in American history was an October during a pandemic. In 1918, after waning through the long summer, Spanish flu came roaring back to claim nearly 200,000 lives, just in that one month, just in the United States. Until recently, this second wave surprise – it was the worst of three to hit the country between 1918 and 1919, most likely because a rare mutation made the virus more deadly – was a bit of obscure medical trivia. But as our current pandemic enters its ninth month, armchair epidemiologists have been wringing their hands over it.” - From a current newspaper article by the same title.

After a surprise hit by the coronavirus the first half of the year and mercurial statistics through the summer, people have become weary of it all as they long for things to get back to normal. From schools to sports teams to restaurants to places of employment attempts have been made at bringing things back to where they once were, or at least to a revised edition of the same even as Fall has begun 22 September, a chronological journey into increasing darkness and rainy days.

Fall is a time of harvest, for which gloomy wet rainy days are a necessity. “Be glad, people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God,” God says to us this Fall, “for he has given you the autumn rains because he is faithful. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains …” Joel 2:23.   

If the epidemiologists are right, and I trust the scientists over ignorance, we could very well be in for a bruiser of a Fall compounding our already weary souls and exacerbating our already anxious emotions and thoughts. Whatever the unknown Fall of 2020 holds for us, we know that a faithful God will be accompanying us still on our journey, never wavering in His commitment to us.

Reflective question: What is your greatest fear for this Fall and Winter? Your greatest hope?

Reflective Scripture: Hebrews 10:23 – “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who has promised is faithful.”

Reflective hymn:

“Great is Thy Faithfulness” – Thomas Chisolm (1866-1960}

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,

sun, moon, and stars in their courses above

join with all nature in manifold witness

to Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

Great is Thy faithfulness. Great is Thy faithfulness.

Morning by morning new mercies I see.

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided,

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.