It was one of our first forays into the public school scene since we decided to keep our kids home this school year.
I’d been crushed when I realized it would make more sense to homeschool them than send them. It boiled down to screen time, that awful waste of time when technology sucks the souls of little boys. That, and masks. The boys can hardly stand them, and I’m not too fond, either.
I figured we could call it a “gap” year. You know, the age-old, tried-and-true, figure-out-what-you-love-in-life pause button. Who is to say a fifth, third, and first grader couldn’t benefit from such a notion? Ha. These are the lies I tell myself to make it through another day with rowdy kids at home. Homeschool, unschool, gap year, cartoon material.
But on this particular Saturday I drove my first grader to a free testing event held by the district. I don’t want him to fall out of practice on the public school scene; I want to gauge the social temperature. After all, I’m just a stay-at-homer now, waiting for the wave to crash and (hopefully) recede. These kids of mine are growing–I have no intention of preserving their innocence at a great cost to their resilience. I played it up to him–it was going to be a mask challenge! The test was simply a game to see who could outlast everyone else! The winner gets a baconator burger and Frosty from Wendy’s!
We parked and I handed him the mask.
He grabbed three sharpened pencils and skipped to the door.
I’ve been wondering about the mask mandates. I live in a city full of pot shops. In front of my Costco I regularly see lines wrapped around the black building with a green plus on it. Each person is carefully socially distanced, wearing masks. Ducks in a row, waiting patiently to buy their mind-altering, paranoia-inducing cannabis of choice to be smoked in their own home. How responsible, I muse.
I think about our dear friend at church who is ninety-one years young and opens her arms wide every Sunday for a big hug from her best friend, my four year old daughter. Both Gretel and Ruby look forward to church all week. They bring each other bags of goodies: envelopes and stationery from Ruby; colored pictures from Gretel. I do not deny either one of them hugs, not ever.
I think about our elderly neighbors who scramble to the door when we take them a meal.
“Just leave it on their doorstep, boys!” I instruct, trying to keep our distance, but I get a card later in the mail. These precious folks have bothered to stamp and mail a thank you card through the mail service, even though we live twenty yards away.
“Thank you for the food,” it says in cramped, tidy cursive. “But please, PLEASE don’t tell the boys to rush right away. We love talking with them and seeing their sweet faces.”
Another neighbor has stuffed two one-hundred dollar bills in the envelope. “Don’t you dare try to give this back,” she writes, shaky and looping, and I laugh because I can hear her saying it in her bossy-Bonnie voice.
This, to me, is where I roll my eyes at the mask rule, the social distancing, the crappy, ignorant, empty promise to keep us all healthy and safe.
I can’t feed a lie to my kids who deliver meals to neighbors and love Ruby like a grandma. We don’t play games. I’m trying to teach them to sort out what is right in a given situation, and masks are sometimes necessary. But sometimes they are not, so we pray every night for God to give us wisdom how to behave in this weird world. And especially, I add silently, me. God, give me wisdom.
Only months ago I read an article on “giving consent”–another made-up rule, a catchphrase as loaded as “safer at home”. It’s taught to teenagers regarding sex; a loophole in chastity, I guess, since chastity never was cool. If he asks, if she says it’s o.k…. Well, if consent is the magic word, I’m claiming it for my own.
Our old people, our friends–they do not want to be distanced from us, nor we from them. Bam–a greater Rule is in place. Love.
There was a rule back in the day (one of the ten commandments, no less) that enforced a strict Sabbath. No work was to be done, nothing that would promote selfish gain or distract from pure, holy, reverent behavior. Remember the Sabbath day–the words were engraved in stone. Keep it holy–it wasn’t to be meddled with, as we humans are naturally inclined to do.
Jesus broke it.
Jesus, who knew no sin, broke the Sabbath.
Did He?
Here was the situation: a man had a withered, useless arm, and in the synagogue in the middle of the church service, Jesus healed him. He asked the man to stretch it out, and it was miraculously, immediately restored. No doubt was quite a scene, since the guy probably had it hidden because a disability was seen as a curse.
Right then, Jesus declared His authority over Law. He went one step further: He made Love the law. In one motion, a self-conscious man who could only dream of two healthy arms–he stretched out the mangled one and proved Jesus cared more about people becoming whole than any flavor of virtue, particularly the rule-following denomination.
There comes a point when following the rules fails. It fails at the point it only serves to ingratiate ourselves to the rule makers. When we do it just so we don’t stick out. It fails when there is no Love.
Here is a checkpoint: Do we look like the rest of the world, mindlessly following rules set before us? Do we even want to? Are we even thinking rationally? We do things out of routine, thinking we are crossing t’s and dotting i’s, when actually, as believers, our eyes have been opened to a greater Truth, a more consequential Law, and the beckoning of our Savior to love.
Love is the Law.
The Pharisees tried to trap Jesus, and this is what people who hate Jesus do. Those who love walking in darkness (1 John) will try to do to us if we follow in his footsteps.
They’ll first blurt out a silly, secondary point, like a kindergartner tattle-telling: “She’s not following the rules!”
The accusation will not fit the transgression. It will fall woefully short of its target. Even though the rest of the playground children will murmur, look who is breaking the rules!–the child of God with a renewed mind holds to a higher Law, love. They recognize a superior Law when they see one, because they recognize Jesus.
Jesus was not not following the rules when he healed a man on the Sabbath. He was, in fact, elevating the Sabbath in its holiness, because He who was with God in the beginning created Sabbath. He was saying, watch this. I AM is Lord of Sabbath, not you flimsy, tassled, arrogant Pharisees.
I guarantee it, the man with the bad arm rejoiced to see it restored before his eyes. He rejoiced in the breaking of the Sabbath, if it meant he was made whole. It caused him to worship, maybe even to an extent he had never been able to worship before.
And isn’t it what the Lord wants from us, to see beyond the rules and religiosity and respect? Doesn’t He want us to love Him and love people first? Isn’t it worship, better and higher?
Don’t I think Ruby and Bonnie and all my other elderly friends and my children praise Jesus when the loneliness dissipates because we follow a higher Law? Of course I do. I praise Him, too.
Two and a half hours passed on a cold Saturday morning. I did some grocery shopping; I perused the book shelf at the thrift store. I drove back to the school. I took off my mask and I jogged around the baseball field until my little boy was due to bust out the front door and claim his baconator and Frosty.
The air was fresh and I did not wear a mask. I maintained a responsible distance and smiled politely at the other parents. I got the feeling some of them cursed me under their breath.
But I’m training to be like Jesus, not like them.
I want my boy to see my face, not my fear.
I finally spot him, and he runs to me.
“That was the best game ever. How do teachers get to be so nice?”
and then,
“Did I win? Do I get a baconator?”
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit in the center and enjoy bright day,
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts benighted
Walks under the midday sun
Himself is his own dungeon.
John Milton
