Today it hit me.

For just a moment, it became heart-stopping, breath-taking, and real. I was scrolling through Facebook, reading the home-schooling memes and toilet paper talk when I saw four words: “confirmed case in Charlton.”

That’s when it truly smacked me in the face.

This isn’t a nation panicking over a far away problem. This isn’t an extended vacation or a chance to read that pile of books. This is Fear. In my hometown.

And for a moment I was terrified.

But, as always, the moment passed and life went on.

It always does. It always will.

This, too, shall pass.

There will be a day when we look up and blink and realize that it’s over. When the doors open again. When I can hug my students and teach them how to decompose a hundred to subtract across zeros. Yes, even that will matter again.

 

But not today.

Today is about breathing. About handwashing, and sharing our hoarded supplies – of toilet paper, of food, of Hope.

Today is about coming together (while sitting apart) and encouraging each other.

Yes, it is scary right now.

But it’s been scary in the past, too. And, sadly, it will be scary again in the future. This cycle will continue until that glorious day when our Savior returns and wipes all tears from our eyes and banishes all sickness from our bodies.

 

Until then, cling to the hope that this, too, shall pass. And cling to the Hope that while this may have caught us by surprise, it did not surprise the God Who makes all things new. The God Who teaches flowers to germinate in the dark and explode in the spring. Today may be dark but our spring is coming.

That is confirmed.