In the 4 years since my sabbatical (when I tried to maintain this blog), things have changed. Some things changed slowly – like my 7 year old is now 11 – and then in recent days things have changed incredibly fast! My last post in 2016 was about how diseases emerge when we mistreat creation. I’ve been teaching for 20 years, and over those years, I’ve given many lectures on how diseases emerge. It’s always seemed urgent to me, but maybe not as urgent to my students? I don’t know. I can say, that even in my urgency, I realize now, that I honestly still felt like the danger of disease was far away. Even though, I’ve been in Uganda during an Ebola emergence, I’ve had close conversations with friends struggling with tuberculosis, and I’ve seen the front lines of the HIV/AIDS crisis; I never really felt very vulnerable. That’s my privilege. I tried really hard to live as a steward of creation and in ways that honored my neighbors, yet if I’m honest, I don’t think I believed that the impacts of my consumption of the earth’s resources would put my family or friends at risk. The consumption of resources always seemed to have an effect on “others”. How humbling it’s been to experience this new “leveled” landscape. We are all at risk. The healthcare I’ve taken for granted is vulnerable to being overwhelmed, and my privilege isn’t my security any more.

I need to find my security in Christ. This is the new landscape. When I feel anxious about a friend who has symptoms, or whether or not my students are safe, I need to remember that I’m not alone. I must place my trust in Christ. We’ve all been forced to reconsider the ways we live, and the things we take for granted. The day that it was announced that kids would be schooling at home, that recitals were cancelled, that we couldn’t go to New York to celebrate her birthday…Wren exclaimed: “WHY CAN’T WE TAKE CARE OF THE EARTH? We are we so stupid? We did this.” (for sure, “stupid” isn’t my favorite word…but it seemed appropriate in this context). She’s got it. We have a responsibility! We are called to love the Lord and our neighbors. Part of our response should be to do better by creation! The more important part is to start journeying across this new landscape with a stronger reliance on Christ! We are not alone. While we journey together through this crisis, we have each other – the community of Christ – and we now have time to examine how we journey together. Let’s put our faith in Christ, love each other, and care for creation!