Today’s date, as I write this, is Sunday, March 15th, 11 am. On any other Sunday, of any other week, of any other year of my entire life, I’d be at church. But not this Sunday. This Sunday church is closed. No, there’s no snow coming down. This is the Sunday that my church, like all others, shut down due to the coronavirus. This is the day after I closed my business, the day before schools will shut down, and well, who knows what’s next? This is a time of uncertainty.
Let me go back a few days to Tuesday, March 10th. It’s the first round of the ACC tournament, and like most recent years, I painfully watched my Wake Forest Demon Deacons exit in the first round. I was still looking forward to all the tournaments that would be played out the rest of the week leading up to the climax on Sunday when the field of 8 would be announced, and the madness would begin. This is the year I was going to win the pool. I had my team, the Dayton Flyers, a group of seniors, that was going to cut down the nets and give me my first ever win in the March Madness Pool. That was where my thoughts were on Tuesday, March 10th. Three days later, that group of seniors from Dayton would not be in March Madness. Neither would any of the other eight teams, NBA teams, MLB teams, high school, college… the world of sports in a mere four days had come to a screeching halt.
Unless you are 75 years of age or older and were alive during the 1949 polio epidemic where nearly 3,000 deaths occurred in the US, this is an unprecedented time. Living in a world of uncertainty is not part of our society DNA. Daily routines of getting kids off to school, going to work, getting off work, running kids to practices and games, grabbing a bite to eat after the running around is done, heading home, going to bed, waking up and doing the same thing over and over has come to a screeching halt. Now we’re having to take off work, fix meals at home, and our kids are confined to neighborhood play. We don’t even have tournaments to attend that take up our entire weekends. We have almost reached the unimaginable—being forced to take a day of rest on Sunday.
Wow, this kind of reminds me of a time in my life. It reminds me of my childhood days growing up in the 60s. A time when we were always around the house playing in the yard. When we heard dad’s shriek whistle, we knew it was dinner time. Yes, a time when we all sat down and ate a home-cooked meal. There was no rush because there was rarely anywhere we had to go after dinner. The weekends, on yeah, we might have a game we played on Saturday. That’s one game in our home town that might take up a couple of hours. Not six games that were played hours away that required overnight stay and took up our entire weekend. Sunday was a day of church followed by lunch at the grandparents and then an afternoon of relaxing. I guess you could say a day of rest.
Experiencing the changes that have transpired in the five days prior to writing this article, it’s hard to imagine what may have occurred in our world by the time you read this. But I do know this: we have survived odds, trials, and tribulations throughout the birth of our nation. The mere fact that we became a nation by winning the Revolutionary War against insurmountable odds is a miracle in itself. We’ve survived other wars, epidemics, depressions, stock market crash, and attacks and always come back stronger than ever. I have no doubt this again will be the case. We all must do our part. If that means staying home with our kids, eating meals as a family, kids playing in the yards, not spending entire weekends with travel teams, and having Sunday as a day of rest and prayer, then that’s what we need to do. Kind of like the life I grew up in as a kid. You know, it just might not be as bad as you think.
