Coronavirus in SC Lowcountry: How to stop worry over jobs, stock market meltdown
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My faith tells me not to worry.
My scriptures tell me that worry will not add a single day to my life.
But I’m worried about the coronavirus that’s creeping around the globe, soon to arrive on my quiet little street. I can’t help it.
I’m worried about my children’s jobs. My son’s job focuses on large gatherings. My daughter’s job is buoyed by travel. The coronavirus is targeting both.
As I write this, the stock market has been shut down again, tripped by a circuit-breaker designed to stop a meltdown.
In a matter of days — hours, really — savings from decades of work has vanished, thanks to the coronavirus. It’s as if it jumped to the cold sidewalk from a Manhattan skyscraper. I worry that it will take years, perhaps, to come back, and those are working years I do not have.
But my faith tells me the dude who had so much stuff he had to build more barns ended up with nothing but a bunch of old barns for heirs to squabble over. He couldn’t take that with him, so the real question was: what could he take?
My friend on Hilton Head Island, the late Rev. Ben Williams of Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, put it another way. He said once at a funeral that in all his years, he’d never seen Brother Marshel from the funeral home roll up in a hearse with a U-Haul trailer hitched to it.
My faith tells me not to worry about stuff, or what we’ll eat or wear. It tells me that the birds of the air are fed without planting crops and building silos. And the flowers of the field are adorned more beautifully than the finest garments of King Solomon.
But my faith also tells me this: Get busy.
The person in the scriptures who invests wisely for his master is not rewarded with a trip to Cancun. He is rewarded with greater responsibility. More work.
I can get busy doing my part, and quit worrying about the rest of today’s pandemic.
I can wash my hands early and often.
I can stay home if, or when, I start to get sick.
I can look after my neighbor: run errands or go to the store for the elderly so they don’t have to get in crowds. Or take them a meal.
I can quit blaming others.
This is not the media’s fault. The media neither created nor spread the coronavirus.
And the coronavirus is neither Republican nor Democratic. Both of you, get over it. Please.
I can quit expecting miracles. Even perfect decisions — something none of us has achieved, ever — would not kill a virus.
Instead, I can get busy doing the few simple things that I personally can do to perhaps limit the spread of the coronavirus.
A saying I’ve heard over the years in the South Carolina Lowcountry is ringing in my ears today.
I’ve heard it from elderly Gullah women. We’ve talked about the unimaginable changes they have seen during their long lives, as a quiet sea island morphed into a busy community and resort.
Oh, they’ll say, as they recall a memorable milestone, like the one we’re experiencing today:
“What a time in this world that was.”
I take it to be Gullah wisdom, something akin to, “This too shall pass.”
What a time in this world to have faith. Time to get busy.
