Passover

This evening I watched a jogger go through a certain kind of grief. He was saying goodbye to the open road. There was a poignancy in his fevered gallop. Like some kind of passionate love affair ending.

As chance would have it Gray came down with tonsillitis overnight forcing me to break several days of isolation to brave it in the tense last minute shop of far too many South Africans. In my quest to get antibiotics  in a crowded shopping centre I felt the very real collective pulse of this nation. And there is a spirit amongst our people, and indeed in the world, that I can’t quite put my finger on. It reminds me of my jogger - we know that something is coming to an end, that a huge shift is underway, that the things that have been as certain as the ground beneath our feet are going to change. And we don’t know if we’re going to be able to run anymore.

We are approaching the holiest times for two faiths - Passover or Pesach. For the Jewish faith Pesach marks the time when the Israelites were escaping from ancient Egypt. They were told by God to mark their doors with the blood of a lamb in order for the angel of death to pass over their homes, sparing them the death of their first born. Pesach represents ‘spring, birth and rebirth, a journey from slavery to freedom, of taking responsibility for yourself, the community, and the world.’

For Christians Passover is the fulfillment of the prophesy - our lamb was Jesus Christ. And through the spilling of His blood we are given eternal life. The angel of death will pass over us. We mark our doors with Him.

Tonight at midnight our country and a third of the world’s population will close their doors. The significance of this is biblical in its proportion.

And in closing our doors we no longer face the world, we face our children. Our first borns. We face broken marriages. We face addictions. We face disconnect. We face lies. We face loneliness. We face anxiety. We face some of our deepest fears. We face ourselves.

And for the first time in a very long time, I would say centuries, we have no answers. Absolutely no one can say how this is going to end. We draw graphs. We plot. Our financial friends tell us to turn our rands to dollars - we ask - what rands? And we learn that  just one guy in South Korea changed the whole outcome of their particular epidemic. He went out when he shouldn’t have.

What we learn is that every action of every single human being has a consequence.

The butterfly effect on steroids.

And so, like our beloved president this evening, we put on our uniform. Our military fatigues. We vow to do battle and we stay at home.

But something much bigger is happening here. The depth of this something will be more far reaching than this pandemic.

The world’s population  is going home to spend time with the people they love. Hundreds of thousands of dads are going to read stories to their children, perhaps for the first time. Mothers are going to cook actual home cooked meals for their children. Teenagers are going to have to communicate with their parents. Couples are going to have to work on their relationships because there are no escapes. Adults will no longer be returning home drunk, choosing to take out their anger on their children, or partners. We will all have to strive for healthy, mindful and harmonious home environments because they are all we have got.

In short love is going to return.

Not for everyone, and not always in the way we hope it will, but there can be absolutely no way that love will not be returning to homes.

Because love happens when we can’t see what is in front of us. Love is a choice to leap blindly. Getting married, having children - the  two biggest choices I have made in love. Love is what I cannot see but choose to believe in. Love means we don’t know how it’s going to end. Love means we choose to have hope. Love means we paint our doors and trust in a promise.  Love is God.

God is returning to our world people. You may not believe in Him. You may not want to believe in Him. But He is here nevertheless. He is unifying us. He is making us want to fight. He is encouraging us to believe that there will be some form of future for all of us although we don’t know what it is just yet. He is making us take responsibility for ourselves and our relationships with each other and the natural world. He is making us appreciate the old and vulnerable while sparing us our children. He is telling us to paint our doors.

A great awakening is at hand. There’s a really bad flu doing the rounds, and it has the potential to be horrific, it has been horrific. This is not an easy time for the world.  But what we do with our love during this time, how we choose to respond to this crisis, is what is going to ultimately save the world.

Paint your doors.