A Pandemic Parable

Life in a pandemic is like a dense fog that comes upon you while driving your car.  You continue to drive, but your vision is impaired.  Turns in the road appear out of the fog with less warning and must be negotiated with greater agility.  In order to react quickly to those unexpected twists and turns, your attention is sharpened, peering into the fog for whatever may appear next.  Fatigue comes quickly, but must not be succumbed to, lest you miss the next turn.  Stopping may be an option, but where and for how long?  To stop on the road will surely result in being rear-ended by others who are also navigating the fog.  That could hurt you and others.  Finding a safe place to stop is an attractive option, but you were driving for a reason.  You still need to get there, and you don’t know if or when the fog will lift.  So you keep driving, hoping to see a way out soon. 

In the fog, there is no sense of direction or destination.  Road signs are obscured completely or just visible for mere moments.  New signs appear along the side of the road, pointing a way out of the fog.  They don’t all agree on which direction to go.  How to decide?  Maybe it’s the way out.  Maybe it will send you in circles, treading on the same road again and again.  The uncertainty and lack of vision makes your world feel small, as if the life you once knew had been swallowed up by the fog and all you have left is you and those in the car with you.  Other cars are on the road, but they’re harder to see.  For everyone’s safety, you know you must share the road.  You try, but you’re already so preoccupied, it’s easy to be inconsiderate.  Without thinking, you’re cutting them off or hogging the road so that you will make the next turn. 

There are wrecks on the side of the road.  It’s hard to know what happened in each case.  Some of the wrecks look bad.  You can’t look for long, but the image stays in your head.  One after another, the wrecks pile up.  Who is responsible for all this?  Were these people being reckless, driving too fast in a fog?  Maybe they followed the wrong road sign and got what they deserved.  Maybe it was others who were being reckless who ran into them or drove them off the road.  Maybe it’s not their fault at all; the fog was just too thick for them to drive.  With every wreck, you tell a story.  You don’t know these people or their situations, but confined to your little car, you somehow feel justified to judge.

It feels as if the fog will never lift.  Occasionally you can make out more of your environment, but then it clouds up again.  After a long while, it becomes apparent that the fog is gradually lifting.  There is no guarantee that it’s over, but there is hope.  You can see more and more now, but it’s hard to relax into it.  You have been in a heightened state for so long; you’ve forgotten how to drive normally.  Cars begin whizzing by.  Is that ok?  Should they be trusted?  Are we really out of the fog?  You pass other cars that are barely limping along, obviously dented up from their drive in the fog.  What’s their story?  Why are they so banged up?  Should they be trusted?  Cars are merging onto the road who took a path you weren’t willing to take.  Should they be trusted?  You suddenly realize you can see something you haven’t seen for a long time.  You begin to make eye contact with other drivers.  The people you judged are looking back at you, wondering the same thing.  Should you be trusted?

Fellow members of God’s Kingdom, I write the above parable out of love, as a cautionary tale.  We all have travelled through the fog of this pandemic.  We all made different decisions and have experienced different traumas.  It is easy to look at one another the way the world does.  Jesus taught us differently.  As we move forward, let’s keep our eyes on Jesus, the One who saw our sin and died for our forgiveness.  Let’s keep our eyes on each other, helping each other to heal and build an even greater trust with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Let’s keep our eyes on the prize, the mission God has given us, to shine the light of His salvation for the world.  Let’s take that road confidently, fog or no fog… together.