Day #24

U. S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, talking about the coronavirus pandemic yesterday on Fox News made a claim that's beyond imagination. He told Chris Wallace that it was somehow fitting for him to speak on Palm Sunday, the beginning of holy week, because, he said, "This is going to be the hardest and saddest week of most Americans' lives."  

I am an American.

He called this week "our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment. Only it's not going to be localized--it's going to be happening all over the country." He said he wanted America to understand that.

If he's right, and I'm not questioning him, then it's already begun in hospitals and nursing homes across the land.

If he's right, then, as we speak, nurses are pulling up sheets over the faces of deceased. If he's right, then I'm scared because right now we have children in a hospital, a mom and dad who want like nothing else to welcome their own little girl into the world. That birth is happening. That child is being born during what the Surgeon General called "the hardest and saddest week of most Americans' lives." 

Thousands of difficult stories are happening all over this country and this world as these letters appear across the bright screen in front of me.  But one looms larger than any other for us right now: in Tulsa, Oklahoma, right now, a father is holding his wife's hand as her heart and body and soul begins the miraculous process of bringing that little girl into a world besieged by a virus few could have believed so devastating.

This morning my rich thanks are for hospitals and doctors and nurses so profligate with their concern that they risk their own lives to treat far too many patients.

But this morning please grant us a blessing, Lord, keep them--mom, dad, baby, and little sister--keep them safe and well. Let that child's first breath be sweet and pure air. Deliver us--all of us--from the fear we can't help but feel all around. 

Amid all the suffering, make it a beautiful day for our little girl to come into the world.