This will be a defining month, a daunting month, a month of sorrow and fear.
But it may also be our best month, the month for which we were born.
If we allow it. If we choose it. If we handle it right.
Yesterday, in somber tones, the president said it would be bad. Very bad. Maybe a hundred thousand. Maybe two hundred thousand.
Americans dead.
Thirty or forty or fifty 9-11s, two or three or four Vietnam Wars.
A passing from this life to the next, a reminder of our frailty and helplessness, a nod to plagues and pestilences past.
It will hit hardest in seven to twenty-one days, the governor says. In two weeks or a little more, the president says. Dark clouds and the flash of lightning, and a storm that is about to hit. The tempest of our times. Something from the Bible and folklore and dark literature of ancient days.
And we must decide who we will be through it all. Will we give in to the temptations of terror and rage, will we run and hide and cower, will it be a month of quaking and shaking?
Or will we take what Providence has dealt us and make the most and the best of it?
That’s the choice of this month. Will it be mense horribilis, or mense in gloria? Do we shrink in horror, or rise in glory?
I hope it will be the latter.
If we meet this month of loss and uncertainty with fear and anger, with weakness and jealousy, it will leave us broken, or ground to powder. But if we meet it with strength and faith, with determination and generosity, it will leave us refined and tempered – purer, holier, better than before.
And that is the course we must take – as individuals, and as a society.
This will either bring us down or build us up.
And we must choose up.
By wiping away our tears, and keeping our fears to ourselves. By lifting others with our faith and resolve, not burdening them with our complaints and anxieties. When we look into our cameras or tap out our words, let us send messages of uplift, the sort that leave people feeling better, and strengthened in their journey.
We all will have it hard, we all will be uncomfortable, we all will be horrified, and we all have the obligation to be our brother’s keeper, to lift the burden, not add to it.
Don’t walk off your shift and spew your frustrations onto social media. Rather, share your confidence and faith, let your words be an act of service to others, not a cry of personal discomfort or aggrievement. Make others and their wellbeing your focus. Think less of how hard you have it, and more of how hard others have it, and how you can give them encouragement and comfort in their struggle.
And know that you don’t walk alone. There are 330 million of us in America, and seven and a half billion of us around the world. And we have one heavenly Father. We are family.
Take strength from that.
Build faith in that.
Believe in the family of man, and in the divinity of God. Pray for faith and strength, to believe in him and to serve them. Pray for deliverance, for the people in your life and the people of the world. Reach out and take the hand of God, as generations of humankind have done, and walk the path that fate has called you to walk.
If we do that, we will rise to the challenge of this month. And as many other months as this trial forces upon us.
If we respond with faith, not fear, with love, not anger, with strength, not weakness, with confidence, not helplessness, we will emerge from this not just survivors, but victors. We will not only have passed through it, but we will have passed through it for a reason.
We will emerge stronger, better, purer and closer to both God and man.
If we so choose.
That is what this month offers us. The chance to fight – against a virus, for our families and survival, and for the betterment of ourselves and our people.
If that is what we choose.