A Look of Loss

"It's been really hard. We're working harder than we've ever worked before and still losing.”

~ A critical care nurse spoke recently about the loss of lives from COVID.


“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.”

~The Acts of the Apostles 4:32-34

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Dear Alex,

Losing at the peak of your prime decade and duty, individually and communally, carves a winning streak in his-story and hers, our narratives beaded as one.

For the first time unimaginable just a month ago, I’ve worked with the National Guard this week, elbows to knees buckled in the COVID crisis. Yesterday I left my desk to haul a carton of life-saving packages looming to the height of my body halved. In the emergent scarcity of helpers, the task must be done. A national guard heaved the mass to relieve me of the load.

What forces are you amassing at the fulcrum of your best years to offset pressure? I squeeze into my sneakers almost daily for a 5K run on treadmill to decompress what is ever more a shock to my old knees. At every chomp of a verdant fig, one of my most adored creations, the flesh must shred to spill sweetness. To get is to give, falling to a morning in resurrected grace.

A season ago, our Sunday worship speaker Chan closed with us the pages of chapter four in Acts. He chanted the words - community, work, service - as emblems of thriving in wilderness. This is our land, our homes, parched, bountiful in possibilities. Soon you’ll be parting your curtains, peering through glass to be struck by trillion throngs of insects and incoming beams, buzzing your way through dossier of labor and loyalty that render no fragrance without sacrifice and loss.

Yours, Kate