What Time is it?

 

This week we start on our Advent journey, looking for hope, peace, joy and love in the most challenging times I have ever known.  I was reflecting on the stories of my family’s challenging times.  My dad told us of how he got measles when he was a young boy and had to lie in bed for weeks without any light in order to protect his eyesight.  How hard it was to stay in bed and not even be allowed to read a book.  He had to rest and wait to get better.  His mom worried about him; there was no treatment except to keep the symptoms of fever down and keep feeding him as healthily as possible.  I was surprised to read that in the 1920’s before he was born, this very infectious disease had a 30% fatality rate due to complications.  Needless to say, there was no doubt in his mind that vaccinations were vital, and from 2000-2017, there’s been an 80% reduction in deaths from measles around the world.  In the 1950’s it was polio, something that my father in law, a phys ed teacher in his mid twenties, almost lost his life to.  His wife would visit him in the polio ward where he was the oldest patient, and it was a long wait before he could see his three sons again.  Again, thanks to vaccines, that is something we have not had to worry about in Canada for a long time.

Now we wait for a vaccine as well as anticipate a time when we will be able to socialize, travel, visit, hug and eat family dinners together.  But as my dad and father in law experienced, now is the time to wait.  Wait in hope not just for a vaccine but for a change in our culture; from the mindset that ‘I am immune’ or ‘I won’t get sick’ or ‘I deserve my rights’ to ‘we are in this together’.  In this time of waiting, let us be inspired by the stories of our families, but also the stories of our faith, stories of people who survive slavery, captivity, war and occupation and find courage and hope and the presence of the Holy as they waited for change to occur.  The story of a courageous young woman pregnant with a culture-changing soul who would challenge our sense of disconnection.  Who would remind us to care for our neighbors.  Who would call us to challenge our preconceptions and biases.  Who would inspire us to call out principalities and powers that take advantage of our fears to promote injustice or self-serving economic policies.  Stories of our faith that proclaim that nothing can separate us from the love of our God, who is with us in life, in death and in life beyond death.  Thanks be to God for this great mystery of our faith!