Dear Covid-19
Dear Covid-19,
I wanted to start this letter with the following words, “I hate you.” I hate what you have done to communities, in particular. You are wreaking havoc on life as we know it. And on top of that, you are doing it as an uninvited guest who is non-visible at that. How rude!
I hate how you are causing extreme challenge on the poor for the sake of your global tour. I am angry with you. You are going through communities and neighborhoods and picking up innocent and cherished passengers along the way on your reckless ride through creation.
Do you have any idea what you have done? You have completely ignored power, wealth and positions. You have stricken the mighty and the lowly. You have even penetrated the United States Senate and the Queen-of-England’s son in Buckingham Palace. You even marched into the halls of the United States Capital and demanded that the two competing elements to come to a truce. That’s power!
You have endangered entertainers, musicians, Disc Jockeys, movie/tv stars, educators, clergy and so many more that mean so much to us. You are attacking the elderly and those considered most vulnerable in our world. You are disrupting educational development in the way we do it. You are showing us an anthropology where there is no respect of position and power.
As a Christian, who is a United Methodist, I have to ask if you realize the level of your massive interruption to our conferencing and way of life? You have flattened egos and rerouted agendas in such a way that everyone has to now reconsider how his/her own sense of power was misleading and fraudulent.
You are challenging the church by literally giving it a run for its money, or lack of it. You are forcing it to be bold in its belief or collapse to your devastating destruction. I don’t find it of mere coincidence that your American occupation has come arguably, during the most important season of the Christian faith, Lent. You are the only entity that has demanded that our Easter Celebrations not be around Palms, Easter lilies,decorated sanctuaries, new choral music and fancy new clothing. This Easter, all we really have is an empty grave that is there to prove that our Savior lives!
Yup, you are separating the wheat from the chaff. I’ll give you that. You are bringing down the mighty. You, are scaring the hell out of us and seemingly our scripture quoting isn’t enough to combat or to slow down your momentum. You rushed up on us so fast and in some cases giving us no notice to prepare for the vacant seats that will be at our table come Thanksgiving.
What do you want from us?!?!?!?
Well, there is good news, nevertheless. The good news is that there is something you won’t be able to snatch from our feeble and weary grasps. That something is, our resolve. Out of these ashes you leave behind, there will be a rising, but not just of anyone. Some no doubt, will remain cynical, entitled, and prejudiced as die hard remnants from a runaway virus, doomed to dead thoughts and opinions.
But, there are a few others that will rise transformed and renewed with a covenant reminiscent of that between Noah and Yahweh, “never again.” Never again, will we assume that we are more powerful than the only One over which you have no power. Never again, will we think our zip codes are more significant than another’s. Never again, will we be so quick to destroy a planet that we have taken for granted and a creation that occupies it including, the black, the white,the brown, the red, the woman, the man, the poor, the rich, the young and the old, those understood and those who aren’t because of their sexual preferences and identities. All of these collectively somehow make up this vast creation which transcends our own silos and holy caves on Sunday morning that even God will no longer honor unless they are completely cloaked in love, redemption and renewal.
I don’t know. To be unseen, to be so stealth, so silent,and so tiny blows my mind as to how massive and powerful you are. You have changed life as we know it and I sense, that we’ll never be the same.
It almost leads me to wonder. With all of this explosive power, it’s hard to determine your real identity.
For a split second, I’m tempted to ask you this question. What would it hurt? But, I know the answer, thankfully, and I’m prepared to celebrate that answer, with or without you in a couple of weeks on perhaps what could be the quietest of Easters since the very first one. In fact, this question is the only way I know how to put you in check, actually.
“Are you the one to come, or shall we look for another?”
Nah, I didn’t think so either.
B. Kevin Smalls 