Years ago, I served a church in a community where the local newspaper had a section in each Sunday’s edition in which they printed public records. You could see who got married and who got divorced. You could see who bought property and who sold property. You could see who got arrested and for what reason they got arrested. And worst of all, at least in my mind, you could also see who had filed for bankruptcy.

The topic that’s been on everyone’s mind this week has been the reaction that has taken place across the country to what we can all agree was the senseless and tragic death of George Floyd on Monday a week ago in Minneapolis. The primary reason it’s been on ours is because of how the reaction spread to Birmingham, as on this past Sunday what began as a peaceful protest turned into an assault on downtown businesses and on members of the media who were there to report on the situation.

We’re at that time of the year in the Deep South when weather systems tend to collide with one another, creating the most calamitous conditions in terms of both people and property. Tomorrow, for example, marks the beginning of the hurricane season, and as I understand it, forecasters are predicting an above-average season for hurricanes this year, which should not surprise us at all. If the 2020 hurricane season goes like everything else has gone in this remarkably troublesome year, then we’d better be prepared to “batten down the hatches,” as they say.

Anyone who has discovered the productivity of newer technologies sometimes has to shake his head and wonder how we ever lived without these things. Everything seems to have gotten “smarter” from the phones we use to the televisions we watch to the cars that we drive, and in the process, we like to think that so have we. We have become smarter also.

Back when it became apparent that the coronavirus had made its way across the Pacific (or the Atlantic, or wherever it came from), I really did think that we’d be in a state of disruption for a month, maybe two, and then everything would get back to normal. That’s one of the reasons I had thought we’d keep the church open, keep our heads and hearts down, and just bulldoze our way through this thing until we made it through to the other side.

I would imagine that one of the first nursery rhymes you learned growing up had to do with church. Do you remember how it went? “Here’s the church. Here’s the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.” What made that rhyme so memorable was the way we were able to act it out. First, you’d put your hands together into a ball. Then, you’d press your thumbs together to make the doors. Next, you’d stick up your index fingers to make the steeple. Finally, you’d open the “doors” and have the rest of the fingers represent the people. I don’t know why that exercise was so compelling. Maybe it’s just that we found some level of comfort in knowing that the doors to our church could be opened any time we felt like it.

Last year Psychology Today magazine ran an article that would turn out to be far more prescient than they ever could have imagined. The article was titled, “What Are You Afraid Of?” While a glance at the title might lead one to believe that the article would be about different phobias that leave people paralyzed – phobias like the fear of spiders or snakes or the fear of heights – the article actually delved more deeply into core anxieties that act as an undertow in our lives, those fears that are constantly dragging us down and holding us back from becoming the type of person we really want to be – phobias like being rejected or being abandoned or being controlled or manipulated by others. What intrigued me about the article was the way it underscored our fear of losing control and being at the mercy of other people, especially when other people can rarely be trusted to have our best interest at heart (“What Are You Afraid Of?” Psychology Today, 8/4/19).