My God… my God… why have you forsaken me… these words were spoken by Jesus… but there are people who said these words last month… and this month… this week… and this day… maybe even as I’m saying them now… people who never thought… could never have imagined… that a pandemic would touch their lives… or the lives of those they know… and love… that they would have to contend with an enemy they could not see… and that many of them would die… that the response of our government would bring to mind the expression… too little too late… would make them wonder what more… we could have done… and we could have done better… tho at this point… we will never know exactly how much better…

But we cannot wish away what is… all that we can do… is decide how we will respond to it… and apparently… social distancing… minimizing our… and each other’s exposure… flattening the curve… is the most we can do… so that when some of us do get sick… there won’t be so many at any one time… that our hospitals and health care workers are overwhelmed… and are unable to give us the care we need… for the best possible outcome…

Richard Rohr wrote… on Good Friday… we lament Jesus’ death… while also living in hope that death does not have the last word on our destiny… because we are born with a longing… a desire… and a deep hope… that this thing called Life… could somehow last forever… but that longing rises up from an eternal something that’s already within us… yes… we are going to die… but we have already been given a kind of inner guarantee… that death is not final — and this guarantee takes the form of love…

We wonder what more we could have done… and we lament every… single… unanswered… question… Why?… but God has not forsaken us… and the most we can do… as we marvel at creation and our lives in it… is nothing compared to what God has done… is nothing compared to God’s best possible outcome… because God has swallowed up death forever… has given us eternal life… and turns our perishable bodies… into imperishable ones… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to live… I just don’t think we have any idea how much life God has in store for us…