0.99%. I calculated it. That’s the meagre percentage of my life spent in this season of COVID. Not even 1%! In other, more astounding calculations, I found 82.9% of my days have been taken up with the Holy Spirit’s attempts to grow me up into a disciple of Jesus. (he’s had a time of it, I can tell you!) I’m figuring, from these computations, that the Holy Spirit-directed part is roughly 83 times longer than this pandemic cycle. If that’s so, then it stands to reason that I could expect to be 83 times more likely to be happily settled into the yoke with Jesus than tied up in grousing about, for instance, my recent, eternal week of confinement waiting (and waiting!) for my negative test results to come back so I, finally, at long last, could mercifully be released to leave the house to rejoin the rest of humanity. As I said, it stands to reason, but too often, in my case, I stand to emotion, to comfort and to dessert (Can you imagine? There was no ice cream in the house, and we were banned from going out to get any!) But I’m OK – now. I mean, really. Don’t worry about me. It’s all good – well, delicious, actually. Right after lunch and a nap on Sunday, we busted out for Bruster’s ice cream parlor . . . The bottom line is, on this, my go-round with such colossal adversity, I didn’t quite score 83/83, but the sweet part is that the Holy Spirit is the super-abundant, daily supplier of grace and mercy and compassion as needed by me, decreed by Jesus and affirmed by the Father. I’m pretty sure I’ll have occasion to have my spiritual mettle tested again sometime in the future. Life’s like that. And next time, I hope to give more of my energies to gratitude than to grousing, to scoring higher – and to making sure there’s ice cream in the house. PD
