Are You Wearing Pants?

March 30, 2020

Scripture

Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are ill-treated as if you yourselves were suffering.  (Hebrews 13:1-3 NIV)

Are You Wearing Pants?

Is one of the many humorous shots I experienced in our new world of Zoom group and individual conversation. It’s the fifth week of Lent, and the third week of the Corona Virus Super Lent.

“When will this end?” is a more serious and frequent companion to our conversations. It is the unknown that really makes us anxious in the midst of our social distancing and isolating. If it’s like Lent but longer we are looking at more than forty days or well into May before the restrictions might ease. But we simply don’t know.

“I don’t know” isn’t our favourite way to live. We are used to schedules and deadlines and outcomes. Anxiety can make us turn inward and selfish. Last week one antidote for me is described in the scripture for today. Using imagination to “remember” those for whom I have concern or whose needs are deep and difficult.

We often casually say “I’ll remember you in my prayers”. This is different – it’s taking time to join the hurting where they are, in their circumstances with all our imaginative faculties - feeling their pain, anxiety, fear or poverty.

Imagining myself with those who are hurting helped last week. A friend’s mom died, and the goodbyes were said without friends. One friend faces layoff and another needs to do some. One friend is alone in a hospital with terminal cancer. And the list goes on. Visualizing Jesus with them, sensing their pain is a way to keep compassion, not selfishness at our centre.

A Prayer for Today

Loving God, you know how antsy I get about life. Under my sometimes-calm exterior there is a lot more anxiety than others easily see. But you see and have compassion to help me manage it, not pretend it isn’t here. Let me have your compassion for others as I muddle through the restrictions this pandemic has imposed and the anxiety it has produced .…. For Jesus’ sake