Two things are spinning in my mind these days. I once had the privilege of listening to a sermon by Dr. Tony Evens on the passage Matthew 7:24-27 from the Bible. He talked about how the storm was something that hit the whole neighborhood. The same storm, the sermon wasn’t focused on the response Jesus was talking about, it was that the storm was the same for the whole town. Different outcomes for sure.
We know that houses are hit differently today with COVID-19, and quarantine and economic calamity. I want to remind us that we are feeling the storm differently. Some have been systemically oppressed while others flourish. Some have to stay home without work and others have more work than they can accomplish. Yet, all over the world it is the same virus.
May we consider what we can do to bring about more life, work together and share the struggle, and create hope for all. This brings me to my next quote which is so important to hear again and again. All of us are experiencing the same virus, but it doesn’t look the same from every community, every neighborhood, every window, or every view.
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Rev. Emily Hagan
Boulder County Interfaith Leader Caucus