The New Normal

I’m over at Stand Firm today.

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Every single morning now, when I fire up the interwebs, there are at least three articles about the “new normal.” Some of them ponderously explain that there will be a new normal. Others disparage the very idea of there being a new normal. The more interesting ones try to imagine what the new normal will be like, offering soothing comfort that “normal” will someday return, in one form or another. The one thing we do know, of course, is that “new normal” is part of the lexicon now, like “totes” and “Ghanaian Funeral Dance” (maybe don’t watch with children). After everyone has said it four times, it loses its luster. One begins to forget that “new” and “normal” are not words that ordinarily go together. By definition, something “new” hasn’t yet become “normal.” After a while it will and then it will not be “new,” it will just be “normal,” and we’ll all go out looking for something “new” again. Too many scare quotes? I suppose I’m going a bit…overboard…that’s just a little joke:

At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.

Wow, forty days is an awfully long time. Let’s see, I’m just going to quickly look to see how many days I have been inside. Hang on…math is hard…ok, based on the fact that we went into lockdown fully a whole week before the rest of the world, that makes, counting today, 36 days. Which means we will hit forty this week. I find it actually a touch insensitive that this would be the official lesson, picked by the church, for this day, and that after this I think the ACNA should rearrange the lectionary so as not to include this text, because the next time it comes up it will totally trigger me. Anyway, where are we:

Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth.

Which means that Noah, like Thomas, waits another seven interminable days, where each day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. The “new normal” if you will, that waiting for what feels like an eternity, because in some sense all of eternity is held inside those long seven days.

He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.

So Noah and his family climb out of the ark, pale and wan with a social isolation that doesn’t end when they feel the wind in their faces and the sun on their backs. The “new normal” is that everyone in the world died—except for them.

This is one of those terrible texts that make the Bible, overall, hard to stomach. Sure, you can tell the story about God keeping Noah and his family safe in the ark. You can tie this ark to the much smaller ark that will be built later, the one that will have the law put inside it, and the bread, and the staff that budded (GET IT?). You can point even farther forward to Jesus who keeps the law perfectly, who hangs on the tree, who is himself Life, who is the bread (seriously, I hope you get it). You can go on and think about the Holy Spirit living inside of you, preserving you, giving you life. But still, so many people died.

Which I am hearing from all corners. I’ve even said it myself—we’re all going to die. So why live in fear? Why be locked inside of that close, tight room, why stay inside the ark, why stay in your house, why “shelter in place?” Read the rest here!