The Grand Reunion

What’d you like most about COVID-19? That’s an awful question. Most of us lost someone we love to that controversial virus. For me, it was one of my dearest friends, Johnny. And I can give you a list as long as your arm of things I didn’t like about it. But as a Christian I’ve always believed we try to find the good even in the difficult. So: What’d you like most about COVID-19?

I think it was this. While as a congregation we were never forced to shut down for a few weeks our numbers were greatly diminished. And over the ensuing six months almost every week a new family who had been in isolation would return. Not only did I see it at my home congregation but I heard about it from many others. That moment when they came back. When the church met again for the first time, when people saw each other, having come together for the purpose of worship, there were hugs, and high-fives, and tears of joy. There was a spirit of “finally we get to be back together.” It was a moving and special feeling. Remember? Seeing our oldest of members moved to tears to just be able to worship in the same building as her Family. To see our youngest of children run toward each other with w reckless abandon hugging their best little friends! It’s easy to forget. I hope in the week-to-week challenges, fatigue, pressure, and frustrations that ministry can bring, that you don’t forget that moment.

It is what I dream of heaven being like, seeing those I love and have missed for so long. A grand, grand, the grandest of reunions. But in the meantime my prayer for you and for me is that we get to be a part of helping one of those “as similiar as it gets down here” grandest of grand reunions every week!