“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” Nathaniel Hawthorne

If anything good is ever to come from the COVID19 pandemic of 2020, it will soon be lost to hurtful words, accusations, shaming, hatred and anger.

I can’t imagine that anything else could possibly happen this year that would shock us or fill us with fear, hopelessness or helplessness. Every day there is something new to be added to the already smoldering pot, and still we’re stunned, disbelieving and confused. There is no order in this chaos of 2020. The only hope for us as a nation is to turn our prayers to God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Instead we seem bent on depending on the father of lies for our very opinions and tenets.

We are hopelessly devoid of compassion when we wish death upon a sitting president. We are inhumanly arrogant to pass judgment on the wearing of masks or not. We follow protocols for social distancing, yet we cannot live without our sporting events. We take chances every day when we step outside our doors and into a world full of germs, hatred, political upheaval, protests, violence and fear. Would we be better off to stay isolated? Would we not then be subject to emotional distress, anxiety, possibility of other diseases? We see the greatest among us, become victims of this disease and yet the first thought is to act like vultures waiting to descend.

My heart is aching right now because of the state of this country. What have we learned from this six month sentence? Has our incarceration taught us nothing? Instead of beating each other into the ground and finding fault with whatever is being said, we should be uniting as a country. Instead of lifting each other up with words of encouragement and hope, we seem intent on destroying everyone who doesn’t agree with us.

We once were a country of young patriots, willing to shed blood for our freedom from a tyrannical monarchy – to become self-sufficient, without the intervention of governing factors. Somewhere between the founding of America, we’ve lost sight of that fact. We’ve become more and more reliant on our government. It has become nothing more than what the founders sought to remedy – a citizenship, being led by career politicians who often have their own interests at heart.

I believe that there is a reason for what’s happening right now. I believe so, because I have faith that God has ordained the future as well as the here and now. His plans are always good. He does not lie. His promises are always kept. Still we tend to try and figure things out for ourselves or listen to the words of those who might easily lead us down the wrong path. We are not sheep. We are not puppets. We are God’s creation and He has given us the ability to think, to reason and to come up with solutions, but without Him as our only leader, we are bound to fail.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5