“Parting Thoughts”

The end of the year of our Lord 2020 cannot come too soon!  This is the year “we would like to forget but will long remember,“ as I heard a narrator say on NBC tonight, closing out the old year.  Are there any words to adequately express what any one of us feels about this year?  I can’t find any words that suffice.  This year, Dorothy and I celebrated, along with David and Christy the first birthday of our first grandchild!  Yet, I have never felt such sadness in the core of my being as I have this year with so many friends and people around me dying.  Every day someone else is in the hospital with Covid-19 and someone else is dying!  There have been so many deaths of friends this year, in my head they are starting to run together, blurring the remembrance of the individual and now remembering only the many.  I am not sure I can handle many more friends dying.  I ask God to make this epidemic stop, but it is still worsening.  Daily, more and more persons I know are getting sick and more people are dying.

As a physician in the community, I hear so many stories of the Covid-19 infection.  I am so glad that most persons recover.  Yet, some of us do not recover.  The new vaccines hold hope and promise of a new beginning, to finally lay the virus down, but will it ever go away?  Will our lives ever be the same again?  Will we always be afraid to be together?  Dorothy and I turned down an invitation today for a New Year’s gathering and meal.  We have gone to this same house most every year.  Yet, this year we will not go.  I have gotten only the first half of the vaccine; Dorothy is not yet immunized.  We are both medical professionals.  No, we will not go.  I have only been to church once this past year for fear of carrying the virus.  I have only been out to eat once this whole year, and then only with my son and his wife.  Will I break protocol before we have been vaccinated?  No, a thousand times no!

Two of my physician colleagues, my office manager, and one of our front staff have been ill with covid-19.  Thank God, they all survived! This virus almost shut our medical clinic.  At one time, the only staff were me and two medical assistants doing everything.  This past week, another staff went out for testing due to symptoms.  It is not a time to get together.  That will come later, perhaps in six months, perhaps a year.  The time is not yet!  I am sure we will know the right time for God will tell us!  Now is not the right time.

Looking tonight at Times Square in New York City, NY, where thousands normally gather, sometimes even a hundred thousand, the streets are mostly deserted.  Times Square is closed to visitors except for the police and a few others given special permission.  Is this not most appropriate?  The party time came and went, and everyone stayed at home!  Such a fitting end to the year 2020.  The theme of the program on NBC tonight summarizing this past year seemed mostly about everyone wanting to hug and touch again.  We are all so tired of Zoom, of watching each other on the Internet or the TV.

That’s about all I want to say about the passing of this year.  It has surely been a long one.  I, for one, am glad this one is about over!  Hopefully, next year will be a better year for everyone!  Maybe 2021 will bring about control of this pandemic.  Maybe not.  But at least we will have a new President, unless the old one figures out how to complete his coup d’etat.  God forbid!  Four more years of that man and we all would surely be as mentally imbalanced as he has proven to be!  Such a miserable year made worse by his insanity and the criminals he has had around him, convicted and pardoned.  Now that Trump has violated the Geneva Convention by pardoning terrorists who killed innocent Iraqis, he has committed a War Crime against the Geneva Convention of nations.  Has there ever been a worse President in the history of our nation?  But at least we are still alive to have witnessed the end of this year!  Just to have lived through this one is saying something!  Thank God, Thank God for that!  For that and so many small and wonderful blessings, we given you thanks, O Lord!  Amen.

Let us pray: “O God, our Savior and the Redeemer and Savior of all humankind, how grateful we are to be loved by you and called as one of your beloved children.  In faith, hope and in love we worship you.  As you have said in the holy scriptures, “The greatest of these is love!”  So tonight, as we exit this old year and begin a new one, we give you thanks for the love you have shown us daily through Jesus Christ our Lord!  You have shown us again and again that our salvation does not come through any political process, but rather through the sacrificial gift of the shed blood of Jesus Christ our Lord!  Forever our sins and our shame are taken from us and we are given eternal life though Jesus Christ our Lord!  One day in your presence is better than a thousand elsewhere!  I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness!

For all those living who still need to find you, O God, including our President, we pray that you may have mercy upon them so they may find forgiveness.  Let us not presume that we have anything more than anyone else!  Let our hearts be filled with the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord through the blessed Holy Spirit, so we may represent Christ in our community.  May we ever live to serve and to worship you, O God, forever!  Hear all our prayers for those sick and those who are dying.  In our dying to ourselves in your sacrificial love and atoning sacrifice, may we find eternal life in You, O Lord Jesus Christ!  And for those of us still living, may we remember that we are dust creatures who carry within our spirits the image of the living Jesus Christ our Lord!  As we pause to give thanks, let us be reminded that our enemies are also our brothers and our sisters and those across the world in other places are full of the same blood of life as we are, together loved by Christ our Savior and all made in the image of our Creator, our Redeemer and our Friend!  In remembering whose we are and who we are in Jesus our Savior, may be ever live to serve you, God our Father, Christ the Son and the Blessed Holy Spirit, one Triune God, to whom be all praise, glory, honor and blessing, both now and forevermore!  Amen and Amen!

“Amen!  We praise you, Lord Jesus Christ!”

Bill Wilson, servant of God by God’s grace and mercies!  “Amen!”