Pastor’s Corner: Counseling Twenty Twenty-one

December 29, 2021

“So, Twenty Twenty-one, what brings you to my office?”

“Everybody hates me.”

“Nonsense. I’m sure somebody likes you.”

“Nope. Nobody. I mean, do you like me?”

“Well, of course, I…”

“No, you don’t. Let’s get real. I was supposed to be some kind of Jubilee year, wasn’t I? Everybody released from the burdens of COVID. That’s a lot of pressure for a year.”

“I suppose it is.”

“It’s hardly as if I could do anything about it? So unfair…And it was so foreign to previous pandemics, too. I mean, the 1918 influenza ran twenty-six months, not twelve or fourteen. And who got blamed?”

“Twenty Twenty-one.”

“Twenty Twenty-one. Everybody hates me.”

“Look, nobody was going to be glad for a longer pandemic than they’d hoped – however unlikely the hope was. But there’s something else to remember.”

“What?”

“You brought blessings, too. There were graduations and successes and births and healings. There were celebrations of resurrection and Holy Spirit and Jesus’ birth. All these things happened amidst the pandemic – all of these things happened in Twenty Twenty-one.”

“Well. I guess I feel a little better.”

“I’m glad. On your way out, would you please show in the next one who wants to see me?”

“Certainly. What’s the name?”

“Ask Twenty Twenty-two to come in.”

With aloha,

Pastor Eric