Continuing Challenges, Continued Hope

Hello. I have neglected to write the past couple Thursday mornings, but as it is Thursday evening, and in light of my last blog post and the current events, I feel a note must be made.

In my last post, I talked about a season of deaths that happened in the fall of 2019 through early this year, 2020. They were caused by all kinds of reasons–mainly old age, but also untimely things and cancer. It seems I spoke a little soon, as the dreaded sickness had spread even into my own county in Maryland, USA. As one person on Facebook said, it feels like a blizzard, mixed with some zombie apocalypse vibes. With the closing of schools and meetings and the shortage of toilet paper, it does feel rather like a blizzard.

Perhaps the most bothersome part of it is that I have been coughing for nearly 9 weeks now, and I am half-Asian. This is not the greatest time to have a cough. Not because of any “racial prejudice” or anything like that, only because it does lend some unnecessary concern to passers-by. I have already worried a couple people at Aldi last weekend.

While the numbers of fatality remain very low to young healthy people, there is no excuse for carelessness. Young healthy people like myself may live around older, higher-risk people. If I contact the virus, I could give it to someone who can’t deal well with it.

I could get into the details about how this virus spreads and ideas on what proper measures should be taken, but that is best left for people to research and and judge for themselves.

I’m not exactly sure what the point of this post is, unfortunately, except, perhaps, that I spoke too soon when I said the season of sickness and death has come to a close. It is no longer in my community alone, but now affecting the globe. I hope for two things: 1) that I can have more time to focus on my writing and editing and painting projects, and 2) that in this time we all, no matter who we are (in fact, the more the merrier,) we can contemplate on how reality consists of the present and eternity, how our light is spent, and what we have to look forward to. If we are Christians, we can know that God is protecting us and that no spirit of fear need overpower us. We can trust God with everything. Everything.

God has set eternity in the heart of man. Ecclesiastes 3:11

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress,
My God, in whom I trust!”
Psalm 91: 1-2