Psalm 96 declares that we should “Sing unto the Lord a new song…..”  It infers that everyday is a new day and we should approach it as if there are no guarantees.  Our grandparents understood that as they raised ole hymns to God thanking Him for daily living.  Our generation, on the other hand, considered daily living a given.  We walked past the gratitude of thank you, please and would you help me? to a gimme, I want, prove yourself to me existence.  An existence of  entitlement, that we are somehow owed beyond the breath in our lungs….  Like the ungrateful nature of some children who walk past the food on their table and roof over their heads as if they are a given.  Even in a time when homelessness skyrockets all across the country.  We now find ourselves having to become resourceful as we reacquaint ourselves with what essential really means.

I remembered hearing someone pray a pray thanking God for clean clothing; I thought it an odd prayer as I’d never been challenged with what my upbringing considered the basics.  Then I went through a period in my life when I understood EVERYTHING, including opening our eyes, is a gift.  We have gone to necessitating six figure salaries, plush homes with all the amenities and the latest car to roll off the assembly line.  Now all of those things are being jeopardized became we do not have the one thing we took for granted……clean, virus-free air.

We are forced to confront how detached we’ve become. Detached from an understanding of ourselves, detached from an understanding of others and detached from a relationship with God.  Due to the mandated shelter in place orders across our nation, many are made to realize they do not recognize, like or have much in common with the occupants of their own homes.  It is amazing that the breath in our lungs we took for granted is the focal point of the attack started by COVID-19.  It attacks the respiratory system, the life God blew into man when He said let him be.  So by detaching ourselves from our maker, did we set into motion events that could prove our spiritual immunity had been compromised?  We will each have to answer that question for ourselves but as we do, we are being reminded that the things we took for granted are becoming more precious everyday.