Wear the Stupid Mask

This summer did not end as I hoped.  My kids didn’t get to perform in their school concerts, I didn’t get to enjoy the finale of Community Bible Study after 31 weeks in God’s word, and I never got to get my final chemo treatment. I missed lunch dates with my friends, date nights with my husband and I did not get to Wales to celebrate a long and difficult year of cancer treatments.  What did I get?  Three weeks in the hospital.  When I should have been celebrating my final chemo treatment, I was lying in a hospital bed, isolated from my family for many days as I was treated for an infection on my spine.  I was finally discharged, only to find myself back in the hospital with a life-threatening infection caused by a tiny parasite in a tick.  Babesiosis almost took my life and took me from the family I love. If anyone had something to be angry about this summer, I guess you could say I had plenty of reason.  Anger, however, was not something I experienced. 

I was used to wearing a mask for the past year when I went out in public.  With white cell counts in the basement thanks to my chemotherapy treatments, I was a marked woman.  I took my life into my hands every time I went to the grocery store, to church to worship or to lead my bible study each week.  Did it stop me?  No!  So, why all this anger and political positioning over a stupid mask?

I am just astounded at the amount of anger I have witnessed over the past few months, especially anger among professing Christians.  Yes, I got frustrated a time or two.  Like the many times I drove to the grocery store only to find out I forgot my mask and had to drive back home to retrieve it.  Or the time I desperately longed for my husband’s hug and my children’s smiles when I was stuck in a hospital bed isolated from them by Covid protocols.  Yes, I was discouraged, but not angry.  Why are so many Christians so darn angry?  Well, I think we have forgotten Who we serve.

 “In humility count others more significant than yourselves. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant. (Phil. 2:3, 5–7)

Consider the health of the grocery clerk more important than your own by wearing a mask.  Consider your health care worker’s safety more important than your own.  Consider the exhausted mail carrier who left your Amazon package in the rain.  Consider your neighbor’s need to hear the gospel more important than the political statement posted on your yard or Facebook page.  Consider your servant role when your husband and children drive you crazy for the trillionth time this month.  Consider your isolation may just be the very thing that is fueling your anger.  Yes, your anger may be self-imposed.  

Loving our neighbor means we put others before our own needs.  I think we need to revisit that great commandment and take it to heart.  Put aside our personal disappointments and love those who need to hear and see the love of Christ.  Consider not your own fears, but how you may be a blessing to others.  Why do we put others first?  Because Christ did that for us. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

How easily we forget this simple, but profound truth when the going gets tough. Let us not forget.  Our disappointments, our frustrations are nothing compared to the sacrifice and suffering our Savior endured for us.  Doesn’t our Lord deserve more from us in this time of trial? So put on the darn mask.  It is a temporary discomfort to endure to ensure others are loved.