Passover for Jews and Holy Week for Christians come this year during what has been projected as the most death-dealing week of the 2020 pandemic.

We are descending into an abyss without the normal physical embrace and comfort of extended family, friends, and community. There is no coincidence that these two most sacred observations coincide with what might well be one of the hardest of times. We are even restricted as to who can remain at the side of a dying loved one. And funerals are conducted when many can only attend online. Perhaps the truth we are being shown is that the most terrible things always yield to new beginnings. Could it be that our descent into darkness is leading to freedom from bondage and rebirth? Maybe the Next Greatest Generation is taking form.

It's hard to grasp that we must endure difficulties in order to fully triumph.  This is unfathomable in our modern world that rejects and honors only success and celebrates only strength.  We have been laboring under a Post World War II illusion that life is measured by achievement after achievement and continual accomplishments. 

There has been both a spoken and unspoken understanding that we should be climbing from one height to the next. The real struggle, descending into depths and failure, known well by The Greatest Generation, has been rejected.  Nowadays we love to celebrate the emancipation of Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt and the empty tomb on Easter Sunday.

But waiting with bitter herbs while ten plagues destroy everything is not so uplifting. Sitting beside the tortured sacrifice on a bloody cross as dark clouds gather is not a place we wish to linger. Yet, turning away from pain and loss makes it almost impossible to accept the reality that hard times are harbingers of a phoenix who rises from his own ashes with renewed power and beauty.

The most terrible things that have happened always yield to something transformational.  I think about Auschwitz and The Holocaust with ghastly images and unimaginable misery. Their devastation cannot be undone. But from the ashes of horror came a homeland for Israel along with awakenings to our inhumanity from people like Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, Viktor Frankl, and so many others.  We have been challenged to change. 

All of us are flawed in one way or another.  Never on a road of continual achievement and success, we travel downward into the place where we find out who we really are.  We find salvation on the same journey that Jesus takes with his cross and on which the Israelites find freedom.  But we must choose.  We can travel downward to receive wisdom and peace or we can run forward grabbing for whatever gives us temporary happiness.

By medicating with drugs and washing away reality with alcohol, money, sex, gambling, food, and entertainment, we flee from anything that hurts.  This flight from ashes is not anything akin to rising from them.  We are missing the point. 

For when we allow ourselves to experience dreams which have turned to dust, grieve losses and admit our failures, we are empowered to become a new creation.  We will have learned the lessons of humanity just like our ancestors.  We will have an appreciation for the suffering of others.  We will be endowed with a strength that comes from compassion rather than aggression.  We will rise.  We will rise. We will rise. Welcome to the Next Greatest Generation.