One of my best friends during this time of crisis in our world has been the study of history. When I look back and see that there have been other times in history when we have walked a similar path, I tend to turn down the volume on what I am feeling in the present. I step back from the tendency to catastrophize and stop using words like unprecedented. I have heard it said that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Frankly, I think the better way to state this maxim is that those who study history know when we are repeating it.
With all the talk these days about “opening things up” and “getting back to normal” I’ve been thinking about an obscure detail concerning the 1920 presidential campaign. 100 years ago Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox were running against each other for president. Their running mates were two future presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt. In 1920 the nation had just emerged from two major crises, World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, and Harding’s campaign slogan was “Return to Normalcy.”
Sound familiar?
Return to normalcy. It certainly expresses our heart’s desire these days. We’re tired of being cooped up in our homes. We’re oppressed by the loneliness of it all. We’re fearful about the economy. We desperately want to get back to the way things were before we shut ourselves in as a result of this worldwide outbreak of Covid-19. Our souls are sated with the bad tasting food of crisis and we want the sustenance of something more savory. So let’s get back to the way things were. Let’s return to normalcy.
Of course the problem with this desire is that we can’t fulfill it. It’s as difficult to go back to what was as it is to predict what is ahead. We can only be where we are. We can only live faithful lives in the present that are fueled by gratitude for and wisdom born of past experience and hopeful anticipation and educated guesses of what might be best for the future. Nostalgia about the past and fear about the future have not proven to be the best foundations for decisions we have to make in the present.
A big part of the Biblical narrative grows out of the theme of what happens when we human beings emerge from a crisis. The expulsion from the Garden, the release from slavery in Egypt, 40 years of wilderness wandering and the entry into the new land, the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, the end of 70 years spent in exile in Babylon and a return to the rubble that was once a great city, the crucifixion and the resurrection of the one who turned out to be a very different Messiah than the one who was anticipated, all give witness to this theme. At each of these moments of transition the story tells both of the longings and sadness the people have as they look back to what was, as well as the fear and the hope they experience as they anticipate something new. And at each of these moments the Bible acknowledges our feelings and gives us songs to sing that put words to them: Wailing laments that long for the restoration of what was and hopeful hymns as we search the horizon for the signs of God’s presence.
Yet there is another song that we are given as well. It is the song that sings of the one constant that endures even in the face of uncertainty and change. There are many versions of it in the Bible but one of my favorites is Jeremiah’s song in Lamentations 3. It faces into the loss and embraces hope. It does not deny the pain and yet sings of something that transcends it. It offers no rosy promise of a return to what was, only a celebration of what remains true. In the wake of destruction and the throes of exile Jeremiah gives us a word for today:
The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
(Lamentations 3:19-24)
David Rohrer
05/06/2020