Reflections During a Recent Bout with Covid

Moody radio has given its listeners a summer challenge. Each week you try to memorize a verse of the Bible. This week’s verse is from Colossians. “Therefore, as you received Christ, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

I am not abounding in anything these days. I am on day eight with Covid and this morning those two red lines tell me this new variant has intentions of hanging around for a while.

But there are a few things I am grateful for, especially after the initial three days of fever and chills have given way to just congestion and fatigue.

Number One: I am devouring books which have sent me into marshes, occupied France, and high society Manhattan between the wars.

Number Two: I am a tad less prideful. No longer can I brag (to myself) about my obviously superior immune system, congratulating it for avoiding Covid for over two years. I now see my health status as the tenuous and frail thing that it is.

Number Three: I have a renewed appreciation for human interaction. Today my big adventure will be a trip to the Walgreens drive-thru to load up on test kits. There will be a real person behind the garbled microphone and I will smile at her behind my mask.

Number Four: Apparently life goes on swimmingly without me. Covid is a reminder that we are indeed like grass, as the Bible says, here today and tomorrow withered and gone. May I not waste the finite time I am allotted.

Covid, you have robbed me of so much – you took my beautiful mother-in-law who succumbed during those early days and you have caused untold pain. You are still in that role, but now your punch is more compromised and for most of us, you only sideline us for a time. And during this time of isolation, you remind us to:

Trade pride for love.

And abound in thanksgiving.