A Look Back at 2020

Every year, December 31st is filled with New Year messages and wishes to everyone, whether a loved one or just an acquaintance. But when the sun rises on 2nd January, the normalcy of life which inundated the 30th December returns. And life goes on unabated. But 31st December 2020 is different. There is no undiminished flow of time; there is no returning to normalcy; there is the unknown trepidation and the shivers of what is known. The other day I was watching "The Midnight Sky" by George Clooney. The movie sent shivers down my spine as the story of devastated and desolated earth, which would have been treated as a figment of the writer's imagination in 2019, looked dramatically real in 2020. The haunting specter of loneliness of the protagonist Augustine and Iris looked remarkably possible.

But this morning, as I sit in my hotel room in the picturesque hilly town of Thelicherry in Kerala, and  I look back at 2020, many thoughts flash through my mind.

1. The treasure of family is the greatest gift man has been endowed with. I lost my mother this year, but the opportunity of serving her is a memory that keeps my tears dry and my heart full of pride, knowing that I was birthed into this world by a lady who, along with her husband, single-handedly developed a legacy of God's ministry in the remote unreached area of Central India.

2. The discontinuity of normal spawned in me a paradigm shift that would have never occurred had the normalcy continued. This discontinuity took me into a renewed study of the conceived notions of theology that I held closer hitherto. It took me to look into the recess of my heart to understand God better. It forced me to re-evaluate the priorities that drove my life hitherto.

3. The biggest gift of 2020 has been the breakdown of pride. In 22 years of ministerial life, the achievements slowly created a layer of self that became an indelible part of my identity. In the midst of the pandemic, all those layers fell like the discarded scales of a snake. And I realized that although the scales fell away yet, I am not naked. Because those layers were simply scales and not my being, I realized that the true naked self is the child that I was before these achievements sprayed pompous self on my identity. Without those layers, I find myself in a happy space because now I don't have to keep those identities intact. I am not an itinerant preacher but a listener, not a theology teacher but a student, not a Christian minister but son of God, not a leader but a follower. Now I realize what a blessing it is to be a child in the arms of God.

4. 2020 had another gift unwrapped for me. It's the unknown. Unknown how my family will ride through the pandemic, unknown how the ministerial engagements that I had will survive, unknown how theological institutions where I lived my whole ministerial life will fare in the midst of the restrictions, unknown how the organizations that I am part of will support us. It was a plethora of unknowns that shook everyone to the core, including me. But the unknown has a way of exposing possibilities. And it was these unknown possibilities that suddenly filled my existential unknowns with a ray of hope. And these new possibilities have filled me with hope and peace.

5. The exploration of these new possibilities forced me to think differently, see a new visualization, assume a novel perspective, learn new skills, and attempt new tasks. Although the pandemic is still raging, the new me is the result of being stretched inside out. There was another sphere where I discovered a new me. It was the first time in my family that everyone lived under one roof every hour of the day. I understood living with your smiling beautiful wife is a blessing, the ever chirping and running children are a joy, being with your loved ones in the same space is heaven, and to do small, seemingly inconsequential things at home is time worth spending.

6. Yet there was another staggering realization that our lives are under God's sovereign control. My mother needed regular hemodialysis and constant supervision of doctors. And therefore, we were out almost every third day, which also included multiple hospitalizations. And I and my wife were out in the open nearly every other day, and yet neither my mother nor any one of us ever contracted Covid. In contrast, many of my friends, including those who were very careful, lost their lives to the virus.  Theologically answering a question of why it happened so is a difficult one and probably an unanswerable one. But one truth is undeniable that God holds sovereign control over every individual's life.

And the unpredictability of life has made a popular adage very meaningful to me in the bygone  2020, which I want to paraphrase thus:
"Live as if you will die tomorrow; plan as if you will live forever."