People treat this year as though it’s the black sheep of the family. The kid on the playground who stinks so bad nobody wants to go near him. A laughingstock. If you spend any time on social media, you’ve seen the variety of memes dedicated to, “If 2020 were a …”
If it were a playground slide, it would be a twelve-foot long vegetable grater in the painful direction.
If 2020 were a beverage, it would be a colonoscopy prep.
If 2020 were a bag of chips, they’d be orange juice and toothpaste flavored.
A hilarious video shows a dozen guys trying to roll out a rain delay tarp over a ball diamond in a deluge. The tarp seems to be folding in on itself, forcing them to roll it all up and try again. It’s labelled, “If 2020 were a tarp.”
Someone asked, “At what point can we just start using 2020 as a swear word?” followed by examples of how that might work. “Well, that’s a load of 2020,” or “What the 2020 is that?”
We need to laugh, don’t we? Especially if the only alternative is tears. But I detect an underlying assumption that 2020 is unique. We gleefully anticipate 2021, believing it will somehow, magically, be better.
I don’t want to be a gloomy Gus, but what if it’s not? A few months ago, I wrote about the wonderful reunion we’d enjoy when church services could resume. I imagined the hugging and the laughing. Now that we’re resuming, it’s nothing like I predicted, and we don’t know how long it will be until we’re free to hug or to sing our hearts out without masks—if ever.
Who knows what fallout effects of this year’s tragedies will continue to plague us for decades? Who’s to say another virus won’t surface on the heels of this one, as bad or worse? What if, in 2025, you find yourself longing for the good old days of 2020?
This year is getting a bad rap and bullying it isn’t helping. Good things have happened, too. Babies have been born. Couples have bravely taken the plunge and gotten married this year despite restrictions. At least it will always be easy to calculate their age or anniversary year.
Personally, 2020 is the year I released my first self-published book. It’s also the year I signed a contract on my fourth novel, to be released in 2021. I’m pumped about seeing this book distributed, and why wouldn’t I be? I’m a 61-year-old with a lung condition living through a pandemic. Those factors only increase the sense of urgency.
And when forced to wait for something, you can know God is in the waiting time with you. A song I love says, “We don’t know what tomorrow holds, but we know Who holds tomorrow. Knowing this, we’ll live above the world and all its sorrow.”
The nightly news is grim. It can easily fill our hearts with fear and anxiety. What if instead, you used the news as a daily reminder that—whatever’s going on around you—you are here today, in this moment. You don’t need to wait a minute to do what God put you here to do. If you’re not sure what that is, Philippians 4:4-9 is a great place to begin.
Who knows? 2020 could turn out to be your best year ever.
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