Monday Ministerial Musings
By Rev. Mark William Ennis
2021 Blog Number 4
January 25, 2021
Waiting For The Vaccine
All over town, as well as from friends across the country I hear the same tale of woe. “I can’t find a place that is administering vaccines.” It is true. There is a real shortage of vaccines and people to administer these vaccines. I don’t know who should be surprised by this. There are three hundred fifty million people in this country. If we each need two vaccines that is seven hundred million inoculations. Is it shocking that this would take a while. How fast could our nation possibly administer that many shots as quickly as we would like? Most of us will be waiting awhile. How does one wait effectively with as little stress as possible?
I learned some tips from a beloved professor at Hope College. He was a child in the Netherlands during the occupation by the Nazis. The Dutch had faith that the Allies would be coming to their rescue but they did not know when. It was years and that is a long time to wait. Death from the war was all around them. Soldiers committed atrocities and bombs were dropped from the sky. No one knew where they landed. My professor and his family survived and talked about how they waited.
They took all necessary precautions. They did all they could do to be polite to the Nazi occupiers. Some people were rude and they generally were killed or imprisoned. My friends family were cautious and tried not to anger the occupiers.
Each house had a bomb shelter in the basement for the frequent air-raids. Times in the cellar were pretty boring. They brought prayer books and hymnals with them and entertained themselves by praying and singing. Often, the faithful used their basements as house churches when it was too dangerous to meet gathered in a church building. One bomb could have killed an entire congregation.
He also told me that there was a chess board constantly set up in the basement. The game would be played during air-raids and left set up to be continued during the next bombing attack. One had to have some enjoyment.
My professor told me that the keys to waiting are: take all precautions, pray, sing hymns, and find something to amuse oneself. I guess I’ll follow his suggestions as I wait for my vaccine. I’ll take all precautions, praise God continually, and do something fun. For me this is reading watching movies and playing world conquest games on my computer.
What are you doing while you wait? I hope you are being careful, praying, singing, and doing something fun. It might be a long wait but it will be shorter than the people in Europe waited for the Allies to arrive.
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To read more of Pastor Mark’s writings, please order a copy of his book:https://deepriverbooks.com/books/the-circle-of-seven/
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