Greetings!
Imagine yourself spending months in training to run a marathon. You work hard, you eat well, you get in shape, and you finish! You did it! You’re excited, and you’re exhausted. Now you can relax.
So you take your shoes off and find your favorite beverage and think about a massage. But how would you feel if someone came by and said you had to run a second marathon, that right then and there you had to put your shoes on and get moving?
I don’t run, but that sounds terrible.
That’s kind of how we might feel with Covid. Things were getting better. We were able to visit other people and travel. Some people were coming to church in-person.
But now the church building is closed on Sunday mornings, and other activities are limited. It feels like we’re starting a second (or third or fourth?) marathon, with Covid and all the other challenges in our society, without time to rest and refresh.
I read about this “second marathon” (click) image last summer in a blog post for pastors about Covid and other social issues. (And I did share the link in an August email, but it’s worth sharing again. Her words are not only for pastors.)
The good news is that we have run this race before, at least kinda-sorta. We know about masks and distancing. We know about pivoting and adapting. We’re all learning new technology. We know that we're called to love our neighbors.