Since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak last spring, not even my cell phone has been able to help me keep track of the time. As the days of social distancing turned into weeks—then months—of isolation, loneliness, and fear, “Does anyone know what day it is?” became a half-joking question in my household.
For me, as for so many others, 2020 was a year of great loss and sorrow. Yet it was also a year of joy in a God who, unlike many others, always gives us the time of day—God’s time. God’s time forms a space to cradle us and hold us close, even when twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racism cause painful separation. God makes a present of the moment, allowing us to both love and let ourselves be loved in defiance of calendars and circumstances.
This message is an excerpt from “A tear in the ribbon of time” by Violet Cucciniello Little in the December 2020 issue of Gather magazine. Today we remember the Martyrs of Uganda, who died 1886; and John XXIII, Bishop of Rome, who died in 1963.
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