Family and Covid
 
As an alumnus of Berry College near Rome, Georgia, I returned to that campus sometime back for Alumni Day. The day was packed with all sorts of get-togethers, but the real treat came during a banquet that evening. 
 
During the banquet, a graduate of the college, now a successful businessman, came to the microphone to announce a scholarship fund that he was setting up for the school. He spoke of his early years of struggle and how it seemed he would never be able to make a passing grade in math. 
 
He told of a teacher who twice has flunked him in the subject and then he announced that he was establishing that scholarship in her name – and in her honor! “She told me I’d never amount to anything more than a ditch digger and I never forgot her words. She gave me an aim in life…”
 
It is interesting that aim, the only thing in this world that can bring us back from the clutch hold of failure, is often born of struggle. 
 
Struggle, recently, it seems, has moved in with us. It’s been a deadly brawler that has appeared in all shapes and sizes, - has ambushed and invaded us and carried a single name - Covid 19.
 
It is, during this time of struggle that we must not forget the importance of family. The word family, itself, is perhaps an overused and arbitrary word today, meaning many things to many people. I never dismiss as sheer sophistry the criticism against an over emphasis on family. It is natural for any age group, young or old, to have a predilection toward those things which touch their lives at the moment. 
 
Nevertheless, during this time when family may seem too close or too far away, many people are finding the opportunity to dismiss the family of the Church altogether. While it is true, there is opportunity for limited live attendance for church services and streaming as an alternative, the church must not forget its true aim:

TO KNOW CHRIST AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN

The church, God’s family, bonded with God’s love, is needed, today, more than ever before. God’s family finds its prototype through love and concern, with each realizing the need for the other and all knowing they must care for one another.
 
In God’s family, individuals are concerned with personal needs, as with the Covid struggle, but the overall good of the family outweighs everything else; long-tern goals are more important than short-lived pleasures. And the aim is always to do the will of the Father.  
 
                                                                        Father Lee+