A Different Epidemic…Hello Hump Day readers. If you’re like me, we’ve begun to gloss over another strain of Covid, the new drug for RSV, etc. It’s like we are assailed every day with gloom and little to look forward to! So, I am going to share something very interesting from Justin Whitmel Earley, a young writer with unbelievable depth and wisdom. With his permission, please enjoy his almost whimsical and heart-warming “beginning of the world.”
“I often think about the beginning of the world. You may think that’s a bit strange, but I think you should try it. It goes like this: One day God is being quintessential God, making things from nothing, and he’s doing it with his covenant friends—the Son and the Holy Spirit. To imagine it right, you have got to see that they all think this whole creation thing is a spectacularly grand idea. It won’t be without hiccups, they know, but they are providentially confident it will turn out to be a smashing success.
Picture it all for a moment: What it looks like for light to separate from darkness for the first time. The crash of an unfathomably large number of cubic gallons of water sloshing against the seabed. I wonder whether God the Son gets down on his knees and traces the shorelines carefully, the way a child concentrates on a drawing, while God the Father watches happily from behind the galaxy. Or whether both just laugh as the Holy Spirit splashes cosmic buckets of salt water on the earth to see where it falls…I could go on, and I encourage you to do the same. Think about what it sounds like to hear “Good!” ring out the first time over Himalayan Mountain ranges. I imagine it sounds something like a dad’s hearty laugh as he watches his kids play happily together in the backyard on a summer evening when, just for a moment, the world seems as it should be.
Think about a peacock strutting for the first time or a lioness exploring her tail the way cats do. All for the first time and hearing the benediction thunder like a divine drum over all things, the Trinity—likely in three-part harmony—shouting, “Good! Good! Good!” So there you have it. The beginning of the world.”
Delightful isn’t it, but then he sends us into a thought pattern and realization of our worst epidemic that continues to get bigger and bigger not only here in America but around the globe. What is it: LONELINESS. Now it is time to remember God’s words in Genesis 2:18, where God declares: “It is not good for the man to be alone.”
In this short sentence everything halts like a paragraph left off mid-sentence, and God does that on purpose. Why? To stop you in your tracks and make you listen ‘It Is NOT good that you are alone’. He wants you to hear it again and again because it could be the most important thing that God has ever said to you! God has created us for friendship—not isolation.
For years sociologists in our country have seen that something is broken—the American soul. This marked the beginning of what has become multi-years of decline; life expectancy was falling not because of a pandemic, cancer or anything else you might expect. The real reasons were factual, grim and sadly could be preventable. The reasons? Young suicides, drug overdoses, alcoholism, marijuana legality, and other preventable diseases of self-inflicted unhealth. In other words, “deaths of despair,” a phrase that has now entered our American vocabulary. And it touches every stage of life, as well as every race and every financial position. Why? Because friendship will make or break your life.
Jesus calls us ‘friends’ and he also calls us to his heart, reminding us that, in him we are never alone. Sadly, many people—whether they have faith or not—don’t know or embrace this friendship with our Savior. Jesus wants us to help change those broken and isolated lives. Why? Because friendship will make or break those lives and Jesus wants us to be a part of the healing. Are you up for it? Don’t worry, you won’t be alone. You have the strength of the powerful Holy Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit and in them, you will succeed! AMEN.
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