Many years ago now my Father had rotator cuff surgery. It’s a repair to a torn muscle in the shoulder, a fairly common procedure.
When the surgeon came in the room to talk to us afterward, he had a vaguely grim look on his face.
“Well we did the best we could,” he said. “But, honestly, it was like trying to sew together wet toilet paper.”
My Father ended up being just fine. But a few months ago, that gruesomely rich expression came back to me as a perfect way to describe 2020.
The COVID pandemic made every day of last year feel like we were sewing together wet toilet paper.
We made and canceled plans. We isolated from friends and family. Work and school changed, and everywhere, we lived on top of each other in ways nobody was used to.
We cobbled together a “new normal.” And then, that changed too. And every time the ground began to feel somewhat solid beneath our feet, things would change again.
“Like sewing wet toilet paper.”
This pandemic hits neighborhoods like Oak Cliff especially hard. In some parts of town, nobody really knows their neighbors and nobody even thinks about it much. People slip in and out of their rear entry garages, like phantoms, and hardly ever connect with those around them.
Not so here. Folks love to connect and congregate. We walk to each other’s houses. We gather on front porches. In the pre-Covid world at our church, some members stroll over to Sunday worship from their homes.
Oak Cliff has a small town feel that’s rare for any part of a major city. And this horrid and lingering pandemic has, at least temporarily, changed some of that.
But now, the year has turned. Vaccines are on the way. And there’s every indication that 2021 may well be a far better year.
Let’s pray that, sooner rather than later, we shall return to some sense of “normalcy” once again.
Yes, it will take time. And certainly, some things might never be the same.
But part of why we celebrate the coming of a New Year is that is allows us to put the old year into a box, off to the side. A New Year allows us to look ahead with some hope.
As I meditate on the “wet toilet paper” metaphor, a story from the Prophet Ezekiel came to me. God gives Ezekiel a disturbingly macabre vision, a “valley of dry bones,” where all life is gone.
God asks Ezekiel to do a ridiculous thing: “Prophecy to the dry bones.”
So, Ezekiel does it:
“Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!…I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.”
And in the story, that’s exactly what happens. It’s like a Stephen King novel in reverse. Bones, sinews, tendons and skin come together and reanimate. The breathe of life comes “from the four winds.” And suddenly, there are legions of thriving bodies again.
Friends, let’s keep faith that this will soon happen for all of us. During 2021, God will begin to bring back what might still feel like dry bones. God is able to create what our feeble sewing skills cannot.
Here in Oak Cliff, God encourages us with those same words:
“I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.”
Trust it shall be so in 2021.
