It's early Sunday morning the week after 'Easter.' I'll call it Easter, because like it or not, Christians co-opted the holiday long ago and just like Christmas, we kind of own it now. Dawn is about an hour away, and I have a sparrow beginning to sing outside on the telephone wires outside. I still haven't figured out why sparrows aren't religious observers of the Lord's day. Does it irritate God that they refuse to observe His day? Why aren't there religious sparrows? Don't they know that there is a pandemic happening? Sparrows don't appear to be observing social distancing, nor have I seen one of them wearing a mask. Would they still congregate at our little church? Maybe they just didn't listen to the major news outlets, or the daily briefings from our Governor. Then again if they won't be quiet on Sundays in observance of the Lord's day, what makes us think they would care what our government is saying. 'Hey, let's all fly up to the telephone wire and wait for the sun to come out and make us warm for the day.' Despite the song of the non-religious sparrows, it is as remarkably quiet as it was last Sunday. It rained last night, and the air has that fresh scent of Spring, even as I'm writing this, there is a gentle mist falling outside. I'm still awestruck by the absence of vehicular noise.
Throughout my life, I've always heard 'car' noises as a background to my life experience. When my family moved to El Paso, Texas in 1960, our little trailer was parked on the corner of a busy intersection at the edge of Fort Bliss. Less than a hundred feet away was a bar where I remember hearing the blare of the Jukebox and the occasional gunshot. I don't remember sparrows singing.
The sounds of modern life were written into my memories long before I even understood what they meant. Unlike my Grandmother who used to boast that she'd seen us (mankind) go from horse and buggy, to the moon, I have only known the drone of cars, planes, trains, and the busy sounds of modern life. I've never known a living room without a TV, or a telephone for that matter. When we first moved to El Paso, we lived about a mile beyond the runway at Biggs Air Force Base, which was still home to B-52's. Every morning they would take off at 5 am and they became my 5 o'clock alarm clock. To this day, I still wake up naturally at 5 in the morning. Why am I saying all of this? Because, it is almost disconcerting to me to not hear the constant steady drone of cars in the distance, even on a Sunday. Yes, there was a time when we lived out beyond the city, but we were close enough to a major thoroughfare that the sound of cars, the local wood mill, and a fashion box company were easily heard in the early morning hours.
Now that I live in the city, it is mind boggling to not hear one vehicle in the distance. I'm sure it will begin again in about an hour or two, but for right now, silence is a sound I'm not accustomed to. What is amazing to me is that even on Sundays this city is a busy place. Even more amazing to me is the knowledge that it took a small insignificant virus to do this. Something we can't see with our naked eye did what massive armies have never done before, and brought the world to its knees. Perhaps, we should have gone to our knees sooner, to ask God for help against this unseen foe, but I'm not going to be religious about it. In the thirty minutes it has taken me to get this far in the blog, (I'm very careful about the words I use) there is a slight blue tinge in the eastern sky. I can hear more birds beginning to chirp in the distance even as a light mist falls. Ahhhh, the sound of life. Finally, one of my neighbors fired up their truck, and must be headed off to work somewhere...on a Sunday. Life still happens, even on a Sunday morning. Life still happens on Sabbath days, Holy days, and every day we human beings have marked as being sacred.
Life goes on, and that is the lesson we should be learning from this pandemic. In the United States, approximately six thousand people die everyday. That was before the Coronavirus pandemic. (The number is actually a little higher, but is actually not a known number.) Death, although tragic, is still the end result of life. My little sparrow friends live about 3 years, and they don't worry about M-95 masks or other things that we humans obsess over. They just live. That is why I worry about them being non-religious. How can they sing so brightly every day when their lives are so short? Why don't they build huge edifices to congregate in and sing worshipful songs to God? I truly don't think there are any religious sparrows! I don't understand why God still cares about them, but Jesus told us that God sees every one of them that falls to the ground. You'd think that sparrows would be the most religious beings on this planet. God said He cares about them, that should be earth shattering news to them. You'd think they would be motivated to find ways to prolong their short lives. They don't seem to care! They don't build cities, drive cars, or do great things beyond sing a lot. Other than pooping seeds everywhere, what good do they serve? I just don't understand why God cares about sparrows so much. Why does He provide plants, that provide seeds, that draw insects, that...oh, well I think you get the point. I read an article by an agnostic who said she doesn't believe in a God who would allow the Coronavirus to kill so many people. I say I don't believe in people! If people are so good, why don't we stop killing people? If that logic holds true, then why would we continue to reproduce if we know that the ultimate end to our lives is death? Selfish, unthinking PEOPLE!! I think I'd rather trust God.
So, unlike the sparrows who don't build great cathedrals, the agnostics who worship their own logic, I'll choose to drive to our small church, social distance myself, (because I don't have Facebook to watch the live stream,) and be a part of about 10 people who worship together. Not because I'm religious, but because like the sparrow, I just HAVE to be in church. It's in my DNA, my raising, or whatever drives me to worship the Creator. Like my little irreligious sparrow friends, my soul has to sing, "because I know, oh yes, I know he watches over me."https://youtu.be/d4mvCKlov4Q
I'm ready for my life to get back to normal. The Wuhan Chinese Coronavirus has caused me to go stir crazy, but I know He watches over me.
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