Resilience.   It’s a quality we often marvel at in people who face uphill battles with disease or loss or some other challenge—the ability to bounce back, to work through, to weather the storm with faith challenged but intact. Or even increased.

            We might wonder how they do it.

            One thing is for certain: they don’t face their trials and tribulations alone.

            Let’s take a look at the Book of Job, an Old Testament book that comes right before the Book of Psalms.   Job, as the story goes, was a blessed man, faithful and upright. He had a large family, lots of land and livestock and beasts of burden.

One day, in an avalanche of bad news, Job learns that all his livestock, beasts of burden, servants (save the ones who report the news), and all 10 children have been killed.  Job tears his clothes, shaves his head, and goes into mourning. But he doesn’t curse God.

            The added wrinkle in this story comes from knowing that all this devastation is wrought at the hands of ha satan– “the adversary”- with God’s knowledge.

            This may be one reason why the Book of Job continues to resonate with readers—it is an ancient attempt at wrestling with the age-old questions about suffering, why bad things happen to good people. And why God seems to let it happen.

Returning to the text, Job’s response to the first round of assaults on his happiness is not what the adversary expects (he had suggested to God that Job’s faith, when tested, would crumble quicker than graham crackers under a rolling pin).  So the ante is upped. A second round of affliction is sent Job’s way, this time involving a horrendous malady that covers him with sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

            By the time his three friends arrive, their mission being to console him, Job is the epitome of misery. His friends sit in complete silence for 7 days and nights, speechless in the presence of such ghastly suffering.

            If we fast-forward to the end of the book, we see that Job’s life is restored. He has ten more children, his livestock, beasts of burden, and servants are doubled from what he initially had. And he lives for 140 more years.

            How nice and neat, we might think. But what in the world was the purpose for everything that happened in between?

            Maybe we get hung up because we need a purpose. We need a reason. We need to know that, as depicted in Gary Larson’s classic Far Side cartoon, God isn’t sitting at his computer, ready to hit the “Smite” button. We just have to know that everything will make sense… which it doesn’t and won’t. There are no good reasons why 3-year olds die of cancer (it’s definitely not because God needs another angel in heaven!), or a 31-year old, 8-months-pregnant woman and her 9-year old son get swept away in a flood.            

Our fallen condition, genetics, cause and effect, actions and consequences—these are the dry, mechanical reasons, not to mention valid. But often times we’re struggling at a much deeper level– hoping for a more satisfying explanation so we can find peace?

One might argue that there may not be any satisfying answers to why people suffer, and why God doesn’t seem to be anywhere close by. We might label this a mystery, or a failure, or a ruse.

Answers that satisfy may or may not ever come.

Money is often lumped in with religion and politics as items we don’t like talking about. So let’s include it in a larger discussion of possessions and recognizing the source of our blessings, along with an understanding that stewardship is and always has been bigger than the money we give to a church.

Being good stewards is being mindful of the needs of others. It means opening our ears to the discussion surrounding fair and equitable wages- and not necessarily the $15/hr-plus that has materialized since Covid-19 landed. I’m talking about the laborer in Ecuador or Guatemala working for peanuts and as a result making it possible for us to buy bananas for a palatable 49 cents a pound, on special.  

Being a good steward means, at a more personal and challenging level, shifting our understanding of terms like “scarcity” and “abundance” and “sufficiency.” It means moving the line when it comes to what we understand to be “enough.”

We will get zero help from the army of marketers who do their demographic studies and view us primarily as consumers. With enviable though misplaced zeal, they will do their best to convince us that there is no such thing as “enough.”

The New Horizons fly-by of Pluto a while back, with its accompanying transmission of amazing photos, has once again given me reason to pause and contemplate a variety of things- from human resourcefulness to the mind-blowing distances and speed covered and sustained with the help of a small amount of nuclear fuel in a baby grand piano-sized spacecraft.

          It took a vehicle that could travel from central PA to Toledo, OH in roughly 1 minute… nine and a half years to travel the 3 billion miles to Pluto. If it were traveling at a speed of only 60 mph, it would take seven thousand years to get there.

          In the Colorado Scale Model of the Solar System, the Sun being the size of a grapefruit, earth would be roughly the size of a pinhead about 50 feet away. Pluto would be the size of a flake of ground pepper about 2000 feet away. And the nearest star- Alpha Centauri- would be about 2500 miles away. All this within our own solar system and Milky Way galaxy.

          Meanwhile, here on earth, a cacophony of voices competes for our attention- or rattles on on behalf of inflated egos- in the midst of contentious legislative debates and a relentless pandemic.

          We argue over what makes for patriotism. We try to navigate amidst homegrown terrorism, growing income inequality, reactive and politically motivated speeches on all sorts of issues. Vicious storms, hot summers, snowless winters, budget stalemates. La nina. Lions and tigers and…

          Looking at a stunning EPIC photo of earth from a million miles out, one might think all is well on this magnificent blue and white marble. Looks are deceiving.

          We spend not enough time looking up, though. Sure, we need to pay attention to what’s in front of us- the needs of our families, various social ills, environmental stewardship. The list can quickly grow long and formidable. And it is difficult to appreciate or contemplate our place in the universe when life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness seem to be passing us by.

Perhaps we could all benefit from a pause in the raucous debates, in the stinging barbs, in the uninformed assumptions, in the misdirected anger. Call a truce, as in that fabled suspension of battle in WW I, on Christmas Eve, when the warring sides emerged from their entrenchment, left their positions, and shared a moment of… peace?

Makes me wonder, if this actually happened, how they could go back and pick up where they left off.

There’s no way to parse the Manchin “no” vote threat apart from it being the sad result of pressure from his donors. As many reports are noting, he can hide behind the reasoning that the BBB bill is too expensive, but the reality is more likely to be that he simply remains in the pocket of the Koch brothers and Big Coal and natural gas concerns.

The seeming fact that one person can derail programs that are wildly popular even among West Virginians—never mind the whole country—is just another reason to be angry about the state of our government, the power of Fox News, and the selective use of polling.

Maybe the biggest travesty in an age full of them is that Joe Manchin will be remembered as the principled one who stood up to the “pressure” of other members of his party (what party is he a part of again?) and voted his conscience.

Yeah, that’s what he was doing.

Do you ever wonder how things would be different if Jesus burst on the scene in today’s world instead of ancient Palestine? Would his teachings stand up, be the same? Would he be able to get his bearings and understand the dynamics of a world which in significant ways is better understood by its inhabitants?

          Would he even be relevant? People would chew him up on Twitter. He’d offend large swaths of the population in one way or another. So, yes, he’d be as relevant as he ever was. Some would listen with detached fascination, others would believe wholeheartedly. Others would derisively dismiss him. Still others would look for ways to silence him.

So I dare think that his mission and purpose would be exactly the same. The human dynamics haven’t changed. We are still full of ourselves, easily tempted and distracted, self-involved, hell-bent on “going it alone” and living life on our terms.

His fate would be sealed at the hands of people who felt threatened by his popularity and deference for the poor. Their consciences would be pricked by his insistence on living a clean, honest, God-fearing life. And they’d never grasp the grace, the capacity for forgiving and loving those we consider unlovable.

So, welcome to what’s left of 2021, Jesus. You’d fit right in.

As much as you could ever fit in.

An article, sponsored by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and first reported on in The Guardian several years ago, examined five key factors that led to the collapse of civilizations such as the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty in China:  population, climate, water, agriculture, and energy.

          The study found that civilizations collapse when these factors coalesce in such a way that natural resources are stretched at the same time the gap between the rich and the poor increases.

          The upshot? Our end will not come because resources run low. Rather it will be hastened by a skewed distribution of those resources as a result of good old-fashioned greed.

          Whether or not this study has any more validity than others of the sort will of course be a matter of opinion and born out with the passage of time.

          But might it get us thinking, at least?

          Regardless of which side of the aisle we’re on- whether we’re red-staters or blue-staters or somewhere in between- our Christian calling requires of us that we be not only mindful of inequality and injustice, but that we find ways to work toward eradicating these things.

          Maybe this study only serves to reinforce something we already know but don’t like to admit: that wealth and power have a numbing, insulating effect on the heart, that lifestyles of wealth and power often enough will be fed and sustained at just about any and anyone’s expense.

          The authors of this study suggest that the collapse of civilization as we know it might not be all that different from what happens in movies like “Blade Runner,” “Elysium,” and “The Hunger Games.”    God help us.

In one of the newsfeeds I subscribe to, there was an article written by someone who was dissatisfied with his recent IPhone purchase. In fact, he used the word “hate.”

          Apparently, he couldn’t navigate the screen with one hand.

          For folks who depend on their technology to get them through the day and handle the tasks on their plates, this inconvenience may loom a lot larger than for the rest of us who might be ready to break out our air violins or offer a derisive, “Are you serious?”

          This critic returned to another current IPhone model for his smartphone needs, so hopefully he found happiness there. His parting shot for the folks at Apple included surprise and disappointment that the designers hadn’t anticipated this hiccup in form and function.

Turns out they apparently hadn’t thought of everything.

For some of us who will never invent anything or risk even the most modest of failures, critique of advanced pieces of technology like smartphones or a host of other items we’d like for Christmas might seem misplaced and somehow uncalled for. For some of us who just consume and use without any thought for how these wondrous things were developed or actually work, such critique may sound a lot like whining.

Maybe the folks at Apple- or any other company- feel the same way, but they say they appreciate the feedback and tweek their products, trying to keep the customer satisfied.

“He’s destroying his legacy.”

What legacy would that be? It’s laughable, if not for being so sad.

Eight hundred thousand and counting.

Health care systems and workers who keep having to tell the public that they can’t do what they do much longer. Attrition, exhaustion, retirement, anger, frustration, running on empty, a dissipation of empathy. When this scourge finally subsides, our doctors and nurses and EMTs and vaccine researchers should be up for a Congressional medal of some sort. And the Fox News crowd have to stop being mad at Fauci and Osterholm and the CDC and anyone else who’s trying to tell it like it is with regard to the pandemic.

I can’t imagine there are many of us on either side of the issues who want this thing to linger. But it is what it is. Covid-19 is doing what viruses do when there’s a robust supply of defenseless targets. It evolves, to the point of finding ways to go after the ones who think they’re protected! Between vaccine skepticism and misinformation and inequitable distribution of the vaccines worldwide, none of what’s happened and is happening should be remotely surprising. Disheartening and disappointing for sure, but not surprising.

We all know how to wear a mask and keep our distance and wash our hands. If more of us had actually done these things early on, we wouldn’t still be talking about this right now. And let’s not forget the three vaccines at our disposal.

Three of them. Readily available here in America.

Read most of an article in The Atlantic yesterday by someone who says that for him and his family, Covid has been over for a long time. That it has never really been an issue, in fact. He appeared to downplay the reaction by people on the left and people in the medical and infectious disease communities, and pretty much poked holes in the way this whole pandemic has been approached.

It struck me as just another dose of the smug, ignorant tone-deafness that has defined the laissez-faire and faux-patriotic attitude toward common sense precautions like masks and social distancing, and vaccines. Just a lot of words that don’t really say anything, as far as I’m concerned. There seems to be great difficulty simply acknowledging that a pandemic isn’t normal, and that people more knowledgeable on the subject are genuinely—and legitimately– concerned. It’s not just another flu season.

People of this mindset speak with unwarranted authority on a topic in which they are not well-versed. They have opinions. They wonder what all the fuss is about because thus far they and their immediate families have somehow been fortunate enough to avoid any effect of the virus.

This writer smugly wears his good fortune and twists the knife on those in the medical and public health fields who are trying to warn the public of the danger in not caring. He takes pot shots at the way we have proceeded—seemingly of the mind that the whole thing has been nothing to be concerned about, really. Almost like he, from his self-appointed lofty perch, could be doing a better job. This seems recklessly cavalier.

It has me thinking about karma, and hoping that he gets a dose. He sounds an awful lot like a smart ass, so maybe there’s a place for him somewhere in the DeSantis administration.