The Best is Yet to Come

In my closet are a pair of old Rockport shoes.  My wife is a bargain shopper and is regularly buying shoes for me when they are on sale.  Lately she has been buying me Sketchers, and I have three pair to wear on a rotating basis.  I also have a pair of Nunn Bush dress shoes.  Still I hold on to the well-worn Rockports.   Until a month ago, I was mainly wearing them when I was working outside.  They are still the most comfortable shoes I own.

For some reason, when the shelter at home order began I started wearing my old Rockports every day.  I have decided they are the only shoes I am going to wear until the “all clear” has been announced.  Not quite sure why, I guess it’s probably because I want something to look forward to.  I live in anticipation of being able to wear my Sketchers athletic shoes when I go for long walks.  I look forward to being able to again put on my Sketchers golf shoes and hit the links.  I anticipate the day I can put on my Nunn Bush dress shoes and return to my duties as a DFW Airport Ambassador.  Until then, each day I put on my old Rockports.

 

I thought about all those unworn shoes in my closet this morning as I read a new statistic from Pew Research.  The team at Pew Research is constantly measuring the pulse of people.  Recently much of their focus has been on the pandemic.  According to the latest data, 73% of Americans feel that “when it comes to the problems the U. S. is facing from the pandemic the worst is yet to come.”

While I might concur that we are not “out of the woods” yet, I want to focus on the future.  My goal is to stay healthy and anticipate what is to come.  The day will come when I can go to the store without wearing a mask and greet people with a smile and kind word.  I anticipate being with my friends and worshipping as a community of believers.  I look forward to joining friends for lunch and for those Friday evening meals at Saltgrass Steakhouse with Barb.  Until then I will put on my Rockports and journey through each day in anticipation.  I await the end the “shelter in place” order, but I also anticipate the reunion with friends and ultimately the joyful reunion in heaven with those I love.  That is what is getting me through this time.

The Church Post COVID-19

It was four weeks ago that Barb and I were scheduled to attend a Michael W. Smith concert.  The initial warnings about avoid large groups to avoid the coronavirus were just coming out.  We decided to skip the concert, which was eventually cancelled anyway.  That Sunday, March 14, we experienced online worship for the first time.  We have been sheltered in place ever since.  Now we are preparing to celebrate Easter without the fellowship of our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Some have said that this might be the closest we’ve ever come to the first Easter when the Jesus’ followers were sheltered in place. 

I have been ending each day with the thought that it is one step closer to a return normalcy, but now I am coming to the reality that when I come out of hibernation I will be entering a very different world.  COVID-19 has really changed everything.  I am confident the world, including the church, will be very different because of this experience.  Here are a few things I suspect will be different:

Fewer Hugs: I suspect once this is past people are going to be reluctant to have the physical contact we’ve known in the past.  I expect fewer handshake and more elbow bumps.  I also anticipate people less enthusiastic in giving hugs.  The “stand and greet” time prior to beginning each worship service is going to be very different.  I expect remnants of the “social distancing” will carry over to the fellowship time between services.

Online Worship: Some worship communities were already live-streaming their Sunday morning worship, now out of necessity, every church has had to adapt.  It has always been viewed a way to make the service available to those physically unable to attend, even those who have to work on Sundays can still participate at their convenience. I suspect in the future some may choose to continue to worship this way.  This is will especially be the case for those in the community who want to hear God’s Word without affiliating with a worship community. 

Virtual Discipleship: The Barna Group has reported that participation in online participation in Bible studies and church small groups has increased by 50% over the last two weeks.  What a gift that we have tools like Zoom and Facebook.  We would not have had the ability to minister to people in this way twenty years ago.  I suspect there will be more of this in the future.   

While things will undoubtedly be very different moving forward the Good News of Jesus remains the same.  The church has been in need to renewal for decades.  We have experienced over fifty years of decline, perhaps this is the turning point.

A Tribute to Uncle Don.

I often describe the atmosphere I grew up as idyllic.  We lived on the eastside of Detroit (East Warren and Outer Drive).  It was a relatively safe, blue collar neighbor.  One of the things that make it secure for me was I was surrounded by relatives.  My grandparents and my aunt and uncle lived within blocks of us.  Neither of my mom’s siblings, Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Don, married. It was like having another set of parents.  We not only celebrated holidays together but spent every Sunday night in their living room watching the Ed Sullivan Show and playing games, usually pinochle. During breaks from school I would often spend several days staying at their house keeping my grandfather company.  They would vacation every summer at a cottage on Lake Huron.  I was always invited along. 

My Aunt Phyllis died in the mid 80’s and Grandpa Ulbrich died in 1989.  My grandmother died in 2002 at the age 102.  Until last summer my uncle maintained the house of Haverhill by himself.   Uncle Don died yesterday afternoon at the age of 97; a victim of the coronavirus.  My mom, Lord willing, will turn 99 later this month.  She is in a nursing home.  Her health is declining.  It puts things into perspective when I realized I could one day soon be the oldest surviving member of the family.

Uncle Don was part of the “Greatest Generation” that saved the world during World War II.  Uncle Don was smart, he graduated from Eastern High with honors, but instead of going off to college he went off to fight in a war.  He was part of a Combat Engineering Battalion that served northern Europe. 

Uncle Don never talked much about the war.  It was only in the last ten years that he started to open up about it with me.  It helped that I learned to play cribbage.  Our favorite place to play was on Belle Isle, enjoying the fresh air and watching the boats sail past.  It was during that time that he talked.  He shared about the long trip across the Atlantic and how confining it was.  He talked of the unknowns once they arrived in Europe.  He ended up serving most of his time in Belgium and Holland.  He talked about the three winter months he spent in a foxhole with his battalion waiting for the orders to move.  He finally finished his tour of duty and returned to the states in March of 1946.  I was born on March 6^th of that year and he made it home in time to join my aunt as sponsors at my baptism.

After the war Uncle Don went back to work for the J. L. Hudson’s Company in Detroit.  At that time Hudson’s was the second largest department store in the World; over twenty stories high and occupying a full city block in downtown Detroit.   Uncle Don spent his entire career at Hudson’s working mostly in the men’s department. Hudson’s decided to close their downtown store in 1983 and they merged with Dayton’s in Minneapolis.  Uncle Don worked in the payroll department and they wanted him to move to the Twin Cities.  He said no and took an early retirement.  He was one of the last employees in the building.   There were no hard feelings.  Dayton’s became Target and Uncle Don continued to be a faithful Target customer and shareholder.

Our family was members of St. James Lutheran Church in Grosse Pointe.  Like the rest of us, he was very involved in St. James.  He taught Sunday school and even served a term as superintendent.   He was a proud member of bass section in the senior.  I had the pleasure of singing along-side him for two years.  For years he was one of the faithful counters who met every Monday afternoon to record the offerings from the previous day.  He also played right field on what was a pretty darn good church softball team.  Probably his biggest legacy is that for years he organized the church blood drive.  Having had hepatitis, he was ineligible to give but he dedicated his life to making sure those who could did.

Uncle Don took me to my first Tiger game, they lost to Cleveland 12-11 in ten innings.  When I ran in my first heat in the Soap Box Derby he was there to greet me at the finish line.  He was a heck of a partner at pinochle and taught me the intricacies of cribbage.  I cherish the memories and feel so blessed to have had him part of my life.  Now my desire is to live the legacy.

“Well done faithful servant.”  Rest in peace Uncle Don.