4-28-2020                                                 
Normal?
No word has been over worked during this pandemic of Covid 19 is the word Normal. Every day the public conversation on public matter by talking heads wants everything back to normal. What is normal nowadays?
In this county, we have a well known female politician who has served in many public offices even the N.C Senate who is a well known lesbian. She makes no secret of her sexual preference, recently on the radio said that she would be glad when things got back to normal. Do she think that her sexual preference is normal.
My mind must be different from the normal, I think of things for instant, those 300 million slaves that was taken from Egypt . By Gods movement must have the daily human matter such as bowel movement. We do not have any direction from any where that these people even own a shovel.
On African Safari, in the mornings, and certainly always available where everyone knew where to find it, a shovel. In the mornings the men would claim a shovel and move in one direction and the women would do the same in another direction. I often mused what these ancestors as well as my most recent ancestors considered in managing these matters. My early ancestors who landed the beach in New Jersey ( founded Morristown) must of had critical moments especially during the rain-ice-snow of living in that area of the world. As they try to  keep " body and soul together" as they attempted the rigors of life can we only imagine what life was like during those "normal days".
Can we even imagine what life would be like for our ancestors and others, as they invaded this unpossessed land from which they had to ekal a living. Can we even imagine what life was like for the academicis as they tried to established higher education, can we even imagine what life was like for the small businessman trying to established himself for the risk of others? Living though terrors of bad weather( hurricanes, tornadoes etc). Most of us love old things, but those museums filled with items of the past can hardly explain the tremors of those first trying to master things: and we call this normal.
Every time I look at a patient, every time I walk through "stacks" of the university library I was over whelmed with the recollection of what mere people had gone through to advance us to this stage of life living in this world and we call this normal.
Every time I visit a graveyard or cemetery particularly those in the country, I was chosen for the knowledge what these departed people had gone through in their life on this earth and yet, they was gone forever. Digging down, you would find and expensive casket or a rotten wood box in which we give our last respect. So, you are born, to go through all this trauma to learn to live and then learn to deal with everything life has to throw at you ( sickness, disability, social problems) and we ask ourselves is this normal. God asked us for two actions in returned for his Grace Mercy and Love for us: Faith and Trust. Is this normal? When I was a young boy around 10 years of age, I remember sleeping in my grandfathers room one night and I heard him over in his feather bed praying all night long, he like all the rest of my ancestors was farmers and at that time, from his home in town, he manage the crops on the farm including tobacco acres and tobacco which  drowned so easily so he knew that all his tobacco land would be drowned and even though my grandparents like my parents and most of my ancestor before me clung to the promises of God, was this normal?  Should he actually have expected answers to his prayers? Should farmers-businessmen-even the lumber and brick or bread company expect to have a profit. When my ancestors was trying to eat out existence with hand tools they brought from England the small amount of protection from the elements ( protection from the rain and harsh cold). I saw the instruments involved in the early delivery of babies, the instruments in early surgery the books involved  in all the academic subjects so little knowledge so narrow the method of getting it to you not knowing what to do in a time of health care crisis can we even imagine how few drugs,how little knowledge was available to care givers at that time and we call this normal.
All these things are human disappointment was the challenge of many years ago. We have the greatest nation on earth because we was able to meet the challenge. It is the matter of the windshield not the rearview mirror which will give us some direction during this time when things are anything but normal: in our way of thinking.You would never had convinced my grandparents or any ancestor I knew if from whom I never heard a four letter word from which our children hear on TV-radio-streets, that they hear today is anything but normal today.
God told us to come Boldly to his throne of Grace we was never very good at following instructions he told our grandparents in the garden, that they had all the beauty in the world available to them. He just pointed towards one tree " Don't touch that tree". Of course they brought all the sin and trials of life right to our mind body and soul this just as a torn in a bush of beautiful roses. We will learn that normal is only our impression of normal. When I saw elderly black women walk all day long in the bush of Africa just to find water to bring home for food, just as I realize that normal includes one woman who because of her royal highness controls most of the population of the world that most of these people in Africa never seen a hand pump never long running water yet, the Queen of England has 75 bathrooms in her house for the use of she and her feeble older husband Prince Philip. Lets get our impressions of normal refresh in our minds.