Clean
An empty highway due to Coronavirus (Credit)
A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
On Sunday I had worship over WhatsApp. It was the second Sunday after the Sierra Leone government ban on public worship due to COVID-19. My friend Liz suggested that the International church I’m a part of could maybe do a Quaker-style “service” in which we all take an hour out to pray together. And, like the Quakers, we could listen to what the Spirit might have to say to us. If you didn’t feel moved by the Spirit to share, then you didn’t share. But if you did feel like the Spirit gave you a word or song or prayer, then you would send an audio or written prayer or song link. I was surprised at how it calmed my anxieties. It was also really neat to join together with people all over the world who were once part of the Salone International community but have since moved home, are now doing work in other countries, or are temporarily back home because of the virus. It was crazy comforting and grounding. I recommend it to you.
I started out the service with a centering prayer on my own. I asked God for a word to use to be the theme and returning point to that prayer. This process always takes a minute. You have to listen to the Spirit to find the right word. And I danced around a few words to find what I felt like I and the world needed in that moment. Renewal? Healing? Release? Peace? In the end, I couldn’t shake that the word for me in that moment was “clean”. Clean hands. Clean door knobs. Clean hospital wards. Clean lungs. Clean streets.
As I was praying, the above scripture from Isaiah 40 came to mind. Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Make straight a highway for our God! It’s generally an Advent reading, preparing the way for the arrival of the King of Kings. But here in this season of Lent, I think it still fits. I read somewhere that this is the “lentiest lent we’ve ever lented”.
Lent is a season of preparation too. It’s a season when we clean out the clutter of our lives and prepare to walk the Via Dolorosa, the way of the cross. The only way to get to resurrection is this way. It includes pain. It includes fear. It includes sacrifice. It includes death and despair. But it is also the pathway to healing, to wholeness, to resurrection, to the joy of Easter morning.
Honestly, I kinda think that’s what all of this quarantining is about…it’s about preparing the way. It’s about making a straight path for the healing, resurrecting hand of God to show up and do what God does best. We do our part in this resurrection work by clearing the pathway. Raising up the valleys and making low the mountains so that there is level ground for the healing Christ to once again walk the way that leads to life.
He does it through every doctor, every nurse, every hospital cleaning crew, every laboratory that's checking tests or forging new vaccines. He does it through mental health professionals, grocery store workers, and that pastor who is figuring out facebook live for the first time. Everybody does their part. And as we do, we make a pathway toward resurrection.
Even though it’s lent, I’ll say that wonderful Advent prayer once more: