The gospel of peace permeates the stench of multiple pandemics

By Glen Foster

It was the first week of January 2009. My wife, Debbie, opened the front door at 6:15 a.m. to retrieve the newspaper from our driveway. In the darkness, she passed what she thought was a cat. Our dog, Yoda, who normally followed her, remained motionless at the door just inside the house. Debbie quickly knew why. 

A skunk was scurrying from our living room to the kitchen, where he/she scampered laps around the island before heading back to the living room. Debbie screamed at me safely tucked in bed upstairs, “Glen, there’s a skunk in the house!” 

Hurrying downstairs, I saw the skunk and then found Debbie and Yoda huddled together in her car, parked in the garage. Yoda began to foam at the mouth, and we realized she had been sprayed in the face. Yoda was handed to me, which meant Debbie, Yoda, the car, our living room and I reeked with the smell of skunk. 

We summoned a skunk remover, who strategically placed ozone machines throughout our house. We bathed each other in a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and soda. And we spent the next two nights in a hotel. 

Eleven years later, we approach the end of 2020, a year that, for all practical purposes, stinks. A worldwide pandemic continues to inflict death, illness, financial loss, educational disruption, mental stress and emotional anxiety. The catastrophe has pushed multitudes into extreme poverty, while the number of malnourished grows by tens of millions. 

2020 will be remembered for racial injustice and for protests that erupted throughout the nation, for a contentious election, for horrific hurricanes so frequent their names ran through both the English and Greek alphabets, for fires in the West more numerous and hotter than ever before. 

2020 will be remembered as the year we closed the buildings—not the church, but the buildings—and met on Zoom, a platform most folks never had heard of until March.

2020 also will be remembered as the year when we washed hands but did not shake them, when we hid smiles behind cloth, when we pantomimed hugs from six feet apart.

In this context, we are serenaded by the song of angels to shepherds, “Peace on earth; goodwill to all people.” Really? Where is this peace so dramatically announced? 

In Ephesians 6, tucked away in the Apostle Paul’s description of God’s armor are these words: “As shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” 

As I write, the Navajo Nation is on lockdown for three weeks because of COVID-19. For months, the Navajo have endured one of the highest coronavirus infection and death rates in the nation. Without running water or electric lines, living in houses isolated miles apart on rough, rocky terrain, many Navajo have been secluded from supplies needed to stay healthy and safe. 

Navajo students are struggling both educationally and emotionally, unable to attend closed schools and with little access to online learning. Throughout the Navajo Reservation, only 25 percent of homes have broadband Internet, and less than half possess computers. 

Using contributions received from throughout the United States, CBF West is donning shoes of the gospel of peace. We have distributed touchless head thermometers, oximeters, first aid kits, masks, gloves, sanitation products and food on three occasions. We are planning a fourth distribution. 

Once-unknown individuals now are called by name. Prayers are prayed in the native language. Generosity of spirit flows through conversations and smiles. Barren land gives birth to sheep and goats, horses and cows, antelope and rabbits. A wonderful, hidden culture emerges into mind and melts into heart. The gospel of peace is walked and driven, demonstrated and experienced.

Recently, I purchased new shoes designed specifically for walking and running. Early each morning, those shoes hit the Tucson hills in excess of four miles.

In a year when we breathe the stench of multiple pandemics, may we all lace up the shoes of the gospel of peace and walk into the rough terrain of isolated lives, delivering the fragrance of wholeness and healing, friendship and compassion—the fragrance of peace. 

Glen Foster is coordinator of CBF West and pastor of Pantano Baptist Church in Tucson, Ariz.