Love in Times of Corona
We are tired. After nearly a year of the pandemic and its restrictions. In our public and private life.
We just celebrated Valentine’s day. Love in times of Corona. It’s not just a New York Times series. It’s a real topic. It’s a tough time for love right now. How do I have energy to love when my life freezes to mere survival?
It’s difficult for singles who finally want to get to know someone. For older people who are even more isolated. For couples who only revolve around themselves and maybe their children at home. For those in mourning who were not allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones.
The virus isolates love. Love now means keeping your distance instead of visiting each other. We have celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas apart from each other. We have endured missing our loved ones so badly. It hurts. Love and pain. They are so close.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.” God, ground and hide and cuddle me and my tired love in your love.
Love comes to meet us. Is brought to us. In acts of kindness, calls, prayers, cards. And through our church year. God is love, walking among us, living for us. God is love preparing to die for us, saving us from ourselves. From the idea that we have to do everything by ourselves. That I have to save the world or myself. That my love is all that counts.
And I take that to heart. Feel the relief. With my often weak love, I don't always have to be the greatest. Rather, I can throw myself into the love of God.
Love in times of Corona. A virus isolates love and transforms it with distance and hygiene rules. It hurts. Pains our hearts. Which is also medically verifiable. Angina pectoris it’s called. Brooding pain, shortness of breath, feelings of fear and tightness are symptoms.
What may heal this heartache? Lent begins today. We have time until Easter. To make our hearts wide again. To turn back from everything that narrows and scares us. That means fasting.
It's not about a hungry stomach or the chocolate we give up or the alcohol or both. It’s not about meat or watching TV or playing video games or whatever you pledged to give up for Lent. I mean, sure, do it if it makes you live healthier and happier. No harm in that. Just don’t confuse it with fasting.
“Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?” asks the prophet Isaiah.
Fasting is about the size of my heart. Fasting means to grow my heart.
Fasting is about something other than forced renunciation. Those who fast want to know whether they still have the strength to change themselves. To turn back.
God's call to repent is aimed at my outside and inside. Inside where my heart beats. And outside, where I carry the ashes as a cross on my forehead today. As a sign of pain about my impermanence and fearfulness. As a sign that I am eternally loved and that my life is fleeting. Remember that you are dust. And to dust you shall return.
I want to take these words to heart. Feel how the ash scratches my skin uncomfortably and makes my innermost visible. All the tired excuses, the doubts, and the dirty stains on my clean record.
Carrying the ash cross on the outside is not enough. True renewal in my life and the vitality that comes with it come from within. Where my heart beats.
So, repentance and fasting are matters of the heart. Of a living heart that is open. For God and his love that comes to meet him. With patience and kindness. And open to others. With a compassionate heart.
Such a heart sometimes tears, breaks, and bleeds. But it also grows back together. Heals. It tells its stories through the scars it holds back. Such a heart remains sensitive to other broken hearts.
This is the fast that God wants. A heart that expands because love comes towards it. From God, who is called " the repairer of the breach ". Who putties cracks in the heart. The "restorer of streets to live in”. God, our life and love. Amen.
