We’ve all become uncomfortably familiar with the goal of the public health guidelines for self-isolating: “flatten the curve.”  This effective metaphor for decreasing the spread of the dreaded coronavirus reminds us that we all need to practise safe distancing.  The science is quite simple, stop the spread of the virus by limiting individual contact.  For the most part it seems that the general population are now cooperating with the message (at least here in Mississauga). 

There is another curve that is needs to be flattened and leveled.    

A recent study by CIGNA carried the following headline:  STUDY REVEALS LONELINESS AT EPIDEMIC LEVELS IN AMERICA.  (BLOOMFIELD, Conn) 01 May, 2018 – Today, global health service company Cigna (NYSE: CI) released results from a national survey exploring the impact of loneliness in the United States. The survey of more than 20,000 U.S. adults ages 18 years and older revealed some alarming findings:

In a May 2019 report Forbes magazine carried similar statistics for other nations.  For instance,  in a nationwide survey released in October from the BBC, a third of Britons said that they often or very often feel lonely.  Nearly half of Britons over 65 consider the television or a pet their main source of company. In Japan, there are more than half a million people under 40 who haven’t left their house or interacted with anyone for at least six months. In Canada, the share of solo households is now 28%.   Across the European Union, it’s 34%.

Here’s the thing.  Loneliness and isolation were a significant problem before the coronavirus pandemic.  One can only imagine these stats in light of our present crisis.  I have a unique vantage point as a pastor of a local congregation to see how people are responding to this crisis.  By far the number one request that is being made of me is “how can I help someone else?” 

Let me give you just one example that represents many others that I have personally witnessed.  A lady from our church called me to ask if there were families that she could help in some way.  I gave her the names of a few families to which she proceeded to purchase grocery items, dropping them on the family’s doorsteps.  She’s not analyzing, prescribing and obsessing over what’s going on in the world, she’s doing her part to flatten the curve of isolation and loneliness.

She is practising the teaching of Galatians 6 verse 10: 

^“So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone,

and especially to those who are of the household of faith”

I recently stood on the “Mount of Beatitudes” with 45 other fellow pilgrims,  some of whom read the famous “blessed” statements of Jesus for me in Tagalog (as seen in the picture to the right).  This “mountain” is a  favorite for me in Israel because it’s the place where Jesus preached His famous “sermon on the mount.”  Some of His best known and most beloved statements were made in that sermon.  But given the present crisis we are facing and it’s subsequent economic fallout, I think it is important to focus on one part of the sermon in particular.  Take a moment to read the following excerpt from His sermon:

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁸ And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  ³⁴ “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:25-34

Let me make five simple observations from that paragraph that I pray will encourage you today: