“…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” – Isaiah 40:31, NRSV
I didn’t grow up a sports fan. I avoided sports at all possible cost! I was the nerdy kid who found his sense of “place” in music, and in Church (big C). And so, I missed out on all the wonderful life lessons that sports offer, about being a part of a team, working together toward a common goal, about strategy, and purpose, about sacrifice for the common good, healthy competition, and about, well, waiting.
And so, I’ve surprised myself in the last few years as I have developed a taste for what I once considered a great bore, America’s pastime, baseball; and more specifically, Houston Astros baseball!
One of the things that I know well about myself after 54 years is that if there is something I don’t know or understand, like, say, baseball, if I find a partner who is an expert who can walk with me in the journey of it, the world I previously did not know opens up in new, fascinating, and even exciting ways. There is incredible strategy and planning to this game I never knew existed!
And so I’ve learned about the “7th-Inning Stretch,” that time at the middle of the seventh inning, when everyone stands to, quite literally, stretch, and sing “Take me out to the ballgame.”
We’re in the 7th week of isolation, this queer, seemingly unending place of being physically cut off, “socially-distanced” from one another, and I hear and see and experience people acting into this “7th-Inning Stretch.” The waiting that prophet Isaiah talks about seems more and more difficult, as we ache to get up and stretch and fill our lungs again to sing, “Take me out to the ballgame,” or anything, quite frankly.
Somehow, it’s in the waiting that God renews our strength, that we mount up like eagles, that we learn how to run without weariness, walk without fainting. It seems as though we should have the chops for this. We wait with anticipation every single Advent and Lent.
And yet, we have no idea how many innings into which “Corona-tide” will stretch. How long will this last? Therein lies the rub…we have no end date to assign “Corona-tide.”
And so, finding our strength, building up our strength, living into our strength, in the midst of the wait, is going to be what propels us through to the other side of the wait. And that’s going to involve all those things that good sportsmanship has to teach. Even in isolation, we are still a team. We have common goals that we can strategize toward, the goals set forth for us in Christ’s Eucharistic vision, laid bare in our baptismal covenant. We can sacrifice for the common good, seeking and serving Christ in that which is beyond ourselves. We can wait in ways that are active, and life-giving, and world-serving. Those things will build up our strength!
We can honor others (and ourselves) in the simplest of ways. Staying home when we can, and wearing masks when we go out honors the Christ we know dwells in the other. Donating to food banks and shelters, to the Church, and to other worthy non-profits honors the reality that God exists within and beyond us. Calling and being a pastoral presence to our neighbors recognizes their sacred divinity. These kinds of actions strengthen who we are as we wait. They allow us to flex and stretch our Christ-muscles. We can do this!
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling the “7th-Inning Stretch!”
Yours faithfully,
Fr. Christopher+
