Lord, I'm angry...

…but in a few minutes I’ll be sad.  And then a few minutes later I’ll be scared.  And then a few minutes after that I’ll be okay.

I was angry when I took that picture of the church.  It was the day Governor Whitmer's executive order was signed that effectively closed our doors until at least April 13.  I was angry that the virus and the response to it were attacking the holiest time of the Christian year.  I was sad that, for the first time in this building's 21 years there would be no Good Friday proclamation of "It is finished" and the bright alleluias of Easter.  That day, I felt so many things as I made preparations to move everything online for at least a few weeks.  As I closed the building, I prayed for the people whose shelter this is from the earthly storms.  I prayed this would end quickly.  I prayed (as I still do every day) that God preserves our faith through this pandemic.
 
If anything, this is a time of wildly fluctuating emotions.  We experience practically every emotion every day as this pandemic unfolds, as we wait for the curve to flatten (or to peak?), as we listen to yet another press conference or read another executive order.  Life is incredibly unpredictable.  Everything normal has been ripped away.
 
Kids have had the last third of their school year together taken away.  Accomplishments will go unrecognized.  Hard work put into music, theatre, and art will go unseen.  Practices and strength training and the like will not get put on display on the field.  Teachers’ well-made plans are being scrapped for all new plans that can be executed at home with some online interaction.  It’s really awful.  Nothing can make that pain go away with the snap of a finger,
 
What we’re really experiencing is grief.  We are suffering a loss, not at all unlike a death.  The situation in which we find ourselves is very much like a death.  We aren’t able to see friends, coworkers, students, and others we were used to seeing every day.  Anticipated events are being rescheduled, postponed, or cancelled.  The overlap is noticeable.  Just as death robs us of anticipated moments with a loved one, the coronavirus has robbed us of so many things.  What we’re experiencing is a series of tragedies and losses.
 
So it’s only natural that there’s a healthy dose of anger in our lives and it finds expression in various ways.  But, how do we, as Christians, approach this?

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