MM is thinking that Mentonites and others who have enforced time on their hands will be looking for more to do and read and maybe to look at this site. Here are some thoughts on our situation:
A crisis brings out the worst and best in people: there are the hoarders who cleared the supermarket shelves, thinking only of themselves. Then there are the people who think about their neighbors and offer to help. And aren’t we all neighbors?
This won’t last forever. When I was a young mother (a long time ago) a neighbor told me about living through the Spanish flu during World War I and how devastating it was for young men away at war having their fiancees die of the flu back home. It is estimated that hundreds of millions of innocent people succumbed to each of those diseases. And vice versa. In medieval times they had the bubonic plague; then and 100+ years ago they didn’t know as much about vectors and other causes or cures. They didn’t have the electronic microscope so they could see the enemy. But the Spanish Flu went away; the bubonic plague went away. And, although COVID-19 is devastating and we mourn the innocent people who died from it, we know the cause and some treatments, if not the cure yet.
Do what you can with the enforced time you have. For example, someone posted on Facebook the story of Isaac Newton: while he was in quarantine for the bubonic plague, he developed the principles of calculus, optics and gravitational theory.
If you are not impacted financially but the feds send you a check for $1,200 anyway, along with everyone else, give it to someone who really can use it.
Rethink what’s really important to you in your life. Life may be different after this, like it was different after 9/11.
The world is wearing out so we can expect to see more crises like this. We must do what we can to make sure we don’t bring the calamity on ourselves: take proper precautions. If the authorities say stay home, stay home – not only for your own good, but for others’ sake.
While you are alive, do all you can for others, just as others do for you. Or maybe they don’t.
Be ready to meet your Maker any day. None of us is guaranteed tomorrow, even when we’re not in a crisis and life is “normal” – which keeps changing, anyway.
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