Smile - A Dose of Perspective

Since we are all being inundated with bad news, hysteria and wild speculation, I thought maybe some perspective would be helpful. I still believe we live in a wonderful time, and if you give me a few minutes, I think you might even agree. Yes, this is a little long, but you are sitting at home with nothing to do, so please hear me out.

Let me first take you back just over 100 years. The planet is in chaos as the Great War takes the lives of over 20 million people with casualties surpassing 40 million. Society is devastated by violence and destruction previously unparalleled in the entirety of human history.

As the Great War nears its end, an even more deadly force sweeps the globe. The Spanish Flu ravages society and kills far more people than the Great War. Both highly contagious and highly deadly, the Spanish Flu becomes responsible for the deaths of 50 to 100 million lives. With a world population at about 1.8 billion, the pandemic kills off up to 5% of humanity. In contrast, with the current recorded world-wide cases up to this point, COVID 19 has yet to infect (not kill, just infect) 1/100 of one percent of the world’s population.

Let me say this another way. If you had a gathering of twenty people back in 1918, odds were about fifty-fifty that someone in the room would die over the next two years because of the Spanish Flu. In contrast, if you had a gathering of 10,000 random individuals today, there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance that no one in the room is even infected yet! (That is for illustrative purposes only. Don’t invite 10,000 of your closest friends over. It will probably violate your local “social distancing” mandates and just the thought of it makes introverts like me squeamish.)

Moving on through the years, another conflict is brewing. Just two decades after the Great War ends, Europe is again in throes of war, and soon the globe will be gripped by the terrors of World War II. It dwarfs the Great War in both the severity of destruction and extent of bloodshed and loss of life. Total casualties are far over 100 million with deaths upwards of 80 million – two-thirds of those being civilians. During this same time, Germany and Russia kill tens of millions of their own citizens.

Although the violence of WWII eventually ends (even as the world is introduced to the unimaginable power of atomic bombs with the instantaneous destruction of two Japanese cities), tensions begin building between America and the Communist Regime. Both countries possess immense potential for nuclear destruction, and any semblance of peace is under constant strain. This comes to a head during 13 days in October of 1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis. For nearly two weeks Americans go to bed each night unsure if they will awake in the morning, and if they do, expecting to see a world entering a nuclear holocaust.

Nuclear war is avoided, at least for the moment, but what follows is two and a half decades of Cold War. The United States and the USSR stare one another down like two gunfighters on a dusty street in an old western movie. Each Superpower anxiously holds her finger dangerously close to the trigger, just waiting for the other to so much as flinch. This time is also littered with other wars, oil embargos and hostage crises.

As the Cold War freezes over, things in the Persian Gulf are just heating up. The next two decades include two wars in the Middle East, another in Afghanistan and, on September 11, 2001, the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil since the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Thus far, we’ve only covered about a hundred years and this has been nothing close to a comprehensive list of what has been experienced during that time. But I think you get my point: America, we have been through some stuff. Plus, I thought you probably need some good news by now.

Since I already brought up the subject of pandemics, how afraid are you of smallpox? How about malaria or typhoid? Diphtheria, measles, or tuberculosis? Polio? Malaria? Some of you may have not even heard of these diseases, although they struck terror in the hearts of millions in the not-so-distant-past and, in some parts of the globe, still do. But modern medicine has dealt these once deadly diseases a mortal blow.

Medicine today is doing things we couldn’t have dreamed of even a generation ago. I have a two-year old son who spent his first fourteen days of life in a NICU ward. He was born prematurely, and his little lungs couldn’t support his body outside the womb, causing his oxygen levels to drop steadily. Hooked up to machines and monitors, I was not even able to hold my son for days. Yet, by the grace of God and innovations of modern medicine (which I believe are also by the grace of God), today he is a normal toddler. Well, not normal. He’s crazy, and we are all afraid of him. But he’s healthy!

Medical advances have been truly amazing. My dad had multiple blockages cleared from arterial arteries one morning and was at my house for dinner later that same day. I even have a friend who has performed surgery on gunshot victims, only to save their lives again later from another gunshot wound. Now, if you are getting gunshot victims as repeat customers, you are a darn good surgeon! However, if you are one of those repeat customers, it’s probably time you start evaluating your life-choices more carefully.

Some of you may be reading this on a smart phone. Have you ever thought about the fact that the little device you hold in your hand contains more computing power than the entirety that was available to NASA in 1970 when they brought back the brave souls from the Apollo 13 mission? NASA had computer rooms; your phone fits in your pocket.

And while that phone can bring you bad news and tragedy from around the globe, it can also give you face-to-face conversations in real time with a loved one from the other side of the world. It sends and receives signals – literally from space – in an instant, so you can keep in touch with friends and family while “isolated.” Messages that took days to receive two-and-a-half decades ago are delivered to your phone in a blink of an eye.

With that same phone, you can also shop at your local grocery store, adding items to a virtual cart, paying online and drive to the entrance of the store where they have your groceries waiting for you. All while still in your PJs! Heck, if you plan it out, you can order everything from Amazon, and have it delivered to your door in just a couple days so you don’t even have to get dressed. Okay, you really should get dressed though. And probably take a shower – you may not be able to smell it, but your family can.

That same computing power I mentioned earlier allows businesses to free up countless hours and energy that would have been otherwise spent in mundane, mind-numbing calculations, unleashing even more creativity and ingenuity. With Zoom, Skype, Facetime and good ol’ email, many businesses are able to operate remotely, which is especially critical in these times. Churches are livestreaming worship services and sermons. We even held a conference the other day with folks spread all over a state about a third of the size as the continental US, yet everyone was able to see one another and interact. And because the camera only shows your face and upper torso, I didn’t even have to wear pants! (Don’t worry, I was wearing pants. I’m just saying, I could have been wearing gym shorts and then put on a nice shirt and would have been good to go 😊)

We even have the technology to allow cars to literally drive themselves (an option some of you should really consider based on your driving record and propensity to text and drive).  Technological advances in all areas of life have afforded us luxuries and conveniences that were science fiction just a generation ago. We are living longer lives and are exposed to fewer threats than ever before. Even in “isolation,” we are more connected in many ways than we ever could have been a decade or two ago, especially to people who don’t live near us geographically.

Now, there are people who are sick, and some will even lose their lives. Others will lose their jobs or experience significant losses of income. Unfortunately, this is a normal part of life. And I want you to know I am not trivializing the trials we currently face. I just don’t want you to miss all the blessings we still enjoy. So, don’t be afraid to turn off the TV and put down your phone. You won’t miss anything other than fear, frustration and possibly five to ten minutes of actual information crammed into a 24-hour news cycle of sensationalism and speculation.

Have some faith in God, and if you can’t do that, at least in the amazing ingenuity and creativity He has instilled in His creation to figure this out. Then pick up a book, catch up with a friend or just sit and enjoy the silence. Or even turn on Netflix or Amazon. Just don’t watch that Tiger King show. It’s terrible. My wife made me watch part of it and I am warning you, it will just make you more cynical and more stupider (oh no, it’s happening to me!).

And smile, because this is an amazing time to be alive.