It’s still winter, but spring is on its way. One day we’ll look back and see that COVID and all of the chaos of our world is in the rearview mirror. One day we’ll emerge from this darkness and stretch in the light.
However, we have to be ready. Spring is like that. It makes demands. Suddenly we have to address all that we could ignore all winter. We have to open the windows, air out the house, mow the lawn, and clean the yard. One day we’re shivering under a blanket as the rain falls; the next, we discover that the stretchy pajamas were fine for hibernation but don’t play so well on the beach.
It’s time to get ready. It will be here in a snap. I pray that it is accompanied by a fading away of our pandemic, and a cooling of our national tensions. If it is, so much the better. If it isn’t, we still have to prepare. How do we do that? We maintain relationships.
First, with God. We stop scrolling down social media for bad news or validation. Try to imagine how many times we could have read the entire Bible in the time spent looking at angry tirades online! We study the Word, we pray, and we think of “whatever is good, whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and commendable.”
Second, with man. We reach out to lonely family members and fellow believers. We reestablish connections with friends, and even foes. We prepare for times when we will have to look one another in the face again, perhaps with minimal risk of virus and maybe even (dare I say it?) no masks! In the light of spring, we may have to interact in-person once more — pale and pasty though we be.
What else? We prepare our bodies. We follow our doctor’s guidelines, take our medicine, get the vaccines. We try to get some Vitamin D. We stop sitting in front of Netflix, eating chips and cookies. We walk, however slowly. We exercise. We begin again to break the tyranny of our desire for comfort foods and comfort activities. Weight loss is absolutely associated with health. That should be a goal.
Certainly, spring is coming soon. That’s reason enough to repair our relationships and focus on health. But even if “spring” is delayed — in terms of pandemic or national, political woes — the best things we can do have nothing to do with stoking our own fear and everything to do with being smarter, stronger and healthier, so that we can face the future confident and capable, whatever comes.