What CAN we do?

 I knit, and I follow a few knitters' blogs.  My favorite one is yarnharlot.ca; this is written by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.  She is a knitter and writer from Canada.  In addition to what she does for a living (write, knit, lead workshops, etc), she is highly involved in a charity called Toronto People with Aids (PWA).  Each year she not only rides in a fundraising bike rally from Toronto to Montreal, she also helps to organize it.  This year, the bike rally had to be cancelled due to, obviously, the coronavirus. The cancellation meant that the organization lost one of its biggest fundraising activities for the year.  The need doesn't stop - in fact it increases - while the funds are much less.

Stephanie's biking team, Team Knit, was talking and trying to figure out what to do to help.  What struck me about her description of their discussion was this:

Team Knit has been trying to figure out how to fix it – or what we can do, or how it is even remotely possible to make some lemonade here, but absolutely everything has proved impossible, and Ken put it best a few weeks ago after a meeting when he said “I feel like all we do is talk about what we can’t do.” That stuck with us. What could we do? What if we flipped it, and asked not what’s restricted or impossible or hopeless…but what’s possible?

How often and how much are we talking about what we cannot do.  We can't sing in worship. We may not be able to even worship in person together.  We can't play sports, and we may not be able to send our kids to school.  We can't go to the beach. We can't hug our friends or family.  We can't.  

But what CAN we do?

How can we do church differently during this time? How can we love from a distance? How can we make everyday life less of a complaint about what we cannot not do and more of a celebration of what we are able to do?

It takes intentionality, creativity, and a positive outlook.  But all of those can be transformational.