As we go deeper into the Corona Virus pandemic, we begin to put more and more faces on the suffering. I take Spanish using Dulingo.Com, and have studied about twenty minutes a day for almost two years. In all that time a young lady named “Lisa K” has kept pace with me. However, over the last several months, her activity on the site has dropped to zero. I finally noticed this, and clicked on her information link. She lives in China and I did not know. China is where the pandemic began. Her picture is small, but she appears to be relatively young. I hope and pray that, if her inactivity on Dulingo.Com has been due to the Corona Virus, it will not be permanent. Though I have never met her, it is easy for me to pray, “O Lord, please, let her live, not just before you, but in our world, too.”

It was John Donne who wrote:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Yes, the loss of anyone diminishes us all, and the loss of every individual represents a dramatic change in the composition of our world, and the wonderful possibilities of our lives are reduced. And so we pray, “Kyrie Eleison,” “Lord have mercy!” Not just for our families, close friends, church members and neighbors, but for all God’s children scattered wherever they may be.

The Pastor