A Global Community

I hesitate to write in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and th social distancing being practiced by so many to bring down the curve.  COVID-19 is a terrible disease, the likes of which w have never known or experienced before.

It is natural, I suppose, for Americans sheltered in place, to complain about the imposed solitude.  And it is natural, I suppose, for us to focus only on ourselves and the hardships that face us now and will face us in the days ahead.  But this pandemic is global.  It is disrupting the lives of countless millions:  Italy, Germany, Spain, the UK--177 countries and territories.  Over 17,000 people globally have died; 392, 000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide and these numbers are growing every day.  Spain alone, has confirmed 6,600 new cases this morning.

There is a passage in the Book of Isaiah that spoke to me years ago and speaks to me still.  It is particularly poignant just now:

Enlarge the limits of your home

spread wide the curtains of your tent

Let out its ropes to the full

and drive the pegs home (Isaiah 54:2, NEB)

We must spread wide the curtains of our tents and enlarge the limits of our concern.  We must avoid offering platitudes such as the one I see on FaceBook every morning about praying “for our family and friends.”  We must, at all costs, avoid focusing on our own self-interest, our own well being, our own protection, our own isolated existence.  We must also pray for those we do not know, those who live in other lands, those who do not think as we do, those who do not look like us, for they, too, are caught up in this global pandemic.  They, too, are God’s children. They, too, are dying.  I am so frustrated when I hear over and over again about the “American people,” as though somehow we are the only people caught up in this pandemic.  We are not in this alone and never have been.  We belong to the whole, we are part of a global community and if we can’t see that now in the light of the present moment we are truly blind.  Expand your thoughts, your concern and your prayers to include all, not just us.

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” (John Donne)