It’s a beautiful Sunday morning here in Florida. Just a few minutes ago, I was looking through a folder of photos I gathered from all over the internet quite a few years ago when one of them caught my eye.
It’s of a beautiful, awe-inspiring Cathedral, and it seems at first to be unremarkable.
But when you pause for just a moment, you realize that there are only a few people in it.
On this Sunday, the photo seems to me to be a pretty potent symbol of what life is like at this moment.
This moment in our shared experience when so many of us are struggling to practice the social distancing techniques we’ve been urged to use.
And we’re trying to wrap our minds around that creeping awareness that it may be quite a while before we can recover, can fully experience again that comforting, life-sustaining practice of gathering with others to share and celebrate our commonality and shared values.
There are many reasons and many ways that people come together. It’s not only gathering for worship on a Sunday morning that many of us are missing right now.
But that’s the part of our shared human experience that’s uppermost in my mind at this moment.
I know that when we can comfortably gather with like-minded folk once again for worship and a thousand other things, we’ll clearly see how very much our lives are diminished when such a precious and vital practice is taken away.
Brother Ben
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Photo credit: Ben is not the owner of the uncredited banner photo and believes it to be covered under Fair Use.
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