(67) Surge

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Surge, originally shared on November 23, 2020. It was the sixty-seventh video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    We are no longer seeing a spike in new coronavirus cases. Instead, we are seeing a surge. What other kind of surge needs to happen right now to make everyone’s lives better?

   Experts are calling the current increase in coronavirus in the LA Area and all across our country a “surge”. What exactly is a surge?

   Remember “Surge” soda? It was popular in the ‘90’. It was a citrus flavored soda released by Coca-Cola to compete with Pepsi’s Mountain Dew. Lots of caffeine and sugar was supposed to give you a surge of energy. Get it? In about 10 years it sort of fizzled. 😊 But, its wired fans prevailed upon Coca-Cola to bring it back in 2014 in a surge of enthusiasm. That’s Surge.

  An online dictionary says that “Surge” used as a noun can mean a sudden, powerful, forward or upward movement, especially by a crowd or by a natural force such as the waves or tide. (i.e. Recent tidal surges caused some flooding in Seal Beach”. Used as verb, it can mean, the sudden and powerful movement forward or upward of a crowd or a natural force. (i.e. The crowd surged forward when the band began to play.”

   We hear of a candidate’s popularity surging in the polls, patriots experiencing a surge of pride, marathoners feeling a surge of energy, a surging crowd of Black Friday shoppers, and so on.

   It took 100 days to go from one case of the coronavirus in the U.S. to 1 million cases. The most recent million cases took just 6 days. That’s a surge.

   This comes just as we are getting into the Thanksgiving holiday when 1 million Americans will travel by air and 50 million will travel by car to holiday destinations. In addition, the flu season and the colder and wetter weather that will place a damper on outdoor activities are beginning. Some are predicting a “twindemic” of the flu and the coronavirus this season.

   We will likely be hearing of additional closures today similar to the ones we haven’t seen since May. If the number of new cases goes up a little more, we’ll be back to the stay-at-home orders that will only allow people providing essential services and people seeking essential services to be out.

      The LA Times reported that over 72% of the new cases that were reported last Saturday were in people under 50, while 91% of the deaths were those older than 50. In other words, younger people bring he disease to older people and the older people die, even though simple steps could literally save lives. Not only are hospitals approaching their maximum capacity, so are the doctors, nurses, therapists, and other frontline workers who provide medical care. Stress, burnout, and fatigue are reaching dangerous levels.

   At this point, I think that the people who refuse to do the simple things like wearing a mask, washing or sanitizing our hands, not touching our mouth or eyes, avoiding large public gatherings, practicing social distancing, and (for almost everybody) getting a flu shot, just don’t care.

   I don’t think that ignorance can be taken as an excuse anymore. Under all the bluster about conspiracies, having secret knowledge, political hoaxes, economic terrorism, and so on, some people just don’t care. They don’t care about their friends, the don’t care about their church, they don’t care about their parents, they don’t care about their children. They don’t care about anybody, including themselves. They just like being thought of as rebels, independent thinkers, and as authorities unto themselves. They like being paid attention to, whether it is confirmation from their friends on Facebook, or the sense of identity and belonging that comes from negative attention from the “them” that are against the “us”.

[***What do you think?   Do you think I am being too harsh here?

   Share your thoughts in the comment section below and we’ll respond to every one.]

   Synonyms for “surge” include an outpouring, a flood, a stream, an upwelling, or to pour, to gush, and to rise. In other words, “Streams of Living Waters”.

   Like a fountain overflowing it banks with living water, our actions, including our call for compassion in caring for others, are an outcome of the faith that is God’s gift. That comes through the Holy Spirit.

   “Streams of living water” is found both in the Old Testament and the New Testament as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit. We call our YouTube channel “Streams of Living Water” because we are “streaming” our video, get it? 😊

   In the Old Testament, for example, the prophet Jeremiah, speaking as a prophet for God, says:

*Jeremiah 2:11-13

   In the New Testament, Jesus uses this same metaphor in several places, including with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:7-26) and in this one, in the Gospel according to John, the 7^th chapter:

*John 7:37-39

   A surge in cases during a pandemic requires massive changes in normal human behavior that some people are willing to observe, for the common good, and some are not.

   An outpouring of the Holy Spirit causes massive change in normal human behavior. It is what some have called a revival. In the book of Acts, the beginning of the Christian Church, we read:

*Acts 10:44-48

   We talked about “Signs and Wonders” type gifts of the Holy Spirit, like speaking in tongues, a few videos ago, and made the point that there are many kinds of spiritual gifts, whether we believe those “Signs and Wonders” type gifts are still really being given to the Church or not.

   Do we not need this kind of revival to help us handle the pandemic kind. Is this not needed in order to put a spirit of compassion into people whose simple behavioral steps like wearing a mask, washing or sanitizing their hands, practicing social distancing, and avoiding crowds, and (for almost everybody) getting a flu shot, are necessary to literally saving lives and getting the economy back on track?

   Paul writes in his letter to the churches of Galatia: “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” (Galatians 5:22-23)  Do we not need these things right now?

   The Church is in decline in the developed Western world, and most of our wounds have been self-inflicted. Ross Douthat, near the end of his book Bad Religion, writes that when the Church has found itself in this condition in the past, two things have brought it back: the Arts and holy living.

   Whatever else holy living means, I think that it certainly includes the fruit (the outcome) of the Holy Spirit; that is, the things that are the outcome of the transformational encounter with God that results in being born again, a new creation: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

   Our culture is in desperate need of these things right now. A revival of the Christian Church, in the power of the Holy Spirit, can fill these needs, as it has done it in the past.

   Let our prayer be for a revival of faith (a living relationship with the living God) in the power of the Holy Spirit be poured out upon the shole people of God, the Church, throughout the world but particularly in the developed Western world, including the United States.

   Let there be a surge in those streams of living waters, and let our hearts, in particular, be open to and ambassadors of that surge.