With talk of reliable vaccines passing key benchmarks, lots of us are breathing just a little easier, even with local caseloads of COVID-19 higher than ever, and more Joy folks being directly affected than ever before. It’s probably still too early to talk about what we’ve learned from this pandemic, given that we’re still deep in the middle of it, but at least one lesson should be clear: Each and every single one of us capable of doing difficult things, and doing them well.
The staff at Joy are all grateful just to have jobs in the middle of skyrocketing unemployment, but each and every one of us has had to figure out how to do our jobs very differently over the last nine months. Even as each of us is coping with our own trauma response to this slowly unfolding crisis, we’re trying to give the best care we can muster to others suffering their own trauma responses. It’s exhausting, and there’s really no way to take a true vacation right now, but we each take a little time off here and there, and then get back to work.
And this is surely true for many of you in your work life. Others have figured out how to cope with weeks or even months of profound isolation. It’s a cliché now, but Zoom chats & FaceTime sure aren't the same thing as face-to-face interaction, not by a long shot. Some of us have even had to figure out how to go for long stretches without any physical contact from another human being, and that’s just not something we were made for.
Others have tried to set aside their own trauma response to try to connect with and be of help to others. We’ve tried to facilitate some of that: with care packages and advent wreath kits, food and paper good collections, cookie and Christmas card exchanges and more. Worship via Zoom & Facebook isn’t anyone’s ideal, but we work to make it a little better and more accessible every week. We’ve needed to figure out some sort of online worship for a long time, and this is forcing us to try hard things, and to try to do them well.
You probably have better examples. It’s popular to quote Philippians 4:13 out of context: “I can do all things through [Christ] who strengthens me.” Remembered less often is St. Paul’s sentence right before that, which isn’t quite pithy enough for wall decorations: “I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.”
These past nine months have shown each of us more clearly what we need and what we hunger for, what we have plenty of and what we have too little of. Indeed the key to doing difficult things well is to know that it is Christ who strengthens us: not to do anything and everything, but to discover that for which we are most gifted, and is most necessary for others, and to do it well.
Pastor Jon
