"On Calamities and Focus"

focus: n. Concentration of attention.
calamity: n. An event resulting in great loss. 

While Americans were glibly and merrily celebrating Christmas and the incoming New Year, China was dealing with a virus which had never been seen before. This novel virus, first manifest in the Wuhan Province, is said to have originated from live bats sold in the open wet markets where live and dead animals are in constant close contact. The bats were the original hosts which infected other animals, and the disease was then transmitted to humans.    

COVID-19, as it is called, is a highly contagious respiratory disease. In our exceptionally mobile world, where a person can have breakfast on one continent and dinner on another, it was inevitable due to its ease of transmission that it would spread worldwide.The first confirmed case in the United States took place on January 21, 2020.

The earthquake March 31, 2020 was more than just a tremor. It measured 6.5 on the Richter scale, the standard scale used to compare earthquakes where 6 to 6.9 is classed as strong. It was centered about 80 miles northeast of Boise, but it rattled the state capital for a fraction of a minute and was the most powerful earthquake to strike Idaho since 1983.

I had been weeding in a client's garden and wasn't even aware of the incident until I was asked if I had received any information from my daughter. My Idaho family lives in a suburb of Boise; close friends live even closer to the epicenter.  With the ease of electronic communication, I was able to find out that both families had experienced the quake but no damage was done. "It was a good one," my friend said. They live in a log house, and she commented, "The logs on this old house were a-grumbling. We ran outside." 

First the Coronavirus and now an earthquake. Choose your calamities to focus on, was my thought. Or not.

Television, radio, and the Internet are filled with vast quantities of information about COVID-19, much of it packed with a wallop of intensity, bordering on hysteria. The situation is fluid, ever-changing so it suits our current form of communication--cable television and the Internet--to report on the pandemic twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

The head count of those infected all over the world, the number of people who have succumbed to the disease, and the lack of resources for medical personnel is staggering. As mankind tries to bring it under control by limiting human contact, the financial ramifications are devastating. Many businesses, particularly those in the travel and hospitality industry including airlines and cruise lines, hotels, and restaurants are suffering due to the government mandates to stay home. Schools from preschool up through universities have been closed in order to avoid one-on-one contact which might precipitate its spread. Self-quarantining, in an effort to limit exposure and the potential threat, has turned cities all over the world into empty tombs.  

The available data on every facet of this pandemic is prolific. 

I found myself reading article after article, post after post written by those who had experienced the disease or those who are treating its patients as doctors and nurses. Information pours out of official government sites as hot spots in the nation try to bring the invisible monster under control. In addition, there is no shortage of videos available explaining "how to" self-cure, avoid being infected, or what to do if infection does occur.

My mind went into overload from the sheer volume of material I had ingested. My concerns for my family and my nation remained unresolved. What is going to happen? There was only silence.

I am one who believes nothing is separate from God and that there is a point and a purpose to all things. Where is my peace, Father? There were no answers of reassurance.

In the same way one cannot physically look forward and backward at the same time, one cannot look to God while focusing on the problems at hand. It is an impossibility. And so, I am given a choice: I can either focus on God, with the knowledge that He is in charge of His creation--which includes me--or I can focus on the situation around me and all that "they" say is or is not going to happen. 

I have made my choice, and I have chosen to not focus on the calamities, whether it's this insidious virus, an earthquake, or any other set of circumstances that may come along. 

Do I know what the outcome of that choice will be? No. I must live it, and I must walk it all the way through. What I do know is that I have a measure of peace that is free from the cacophony of the endless chatter surrounding this great upheaval. For me, that is priceless.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee:

because he trusteth in thee.

Isaiah 26:3 (KJV)