The Lucky Ones

“With great power, come great responsibility.”

As the coronavirus continues its rampage and the lockdown drags on in parts of our nation, there are many of us who remain essentially unscathed. Technology has allowed us to work from home and to have essentials delivered right to our doors. Youth and robust immune systems have allowed us to maintain our health. Constant content allows us to distract ourselves from the nightmare outside our walls. Suffice to say, we’re the lucky ones.

On the other side of those walls, hospitals overflow with the sick and dying. Essential workers risk their lives to mitigate the damage or to just put food on their own tables. The elderly and infirm tremble in their homes because a trip to the grocery store could put them on their deathbeds. Meanwhile, our worst complaints are that we can’t dine out, hit the gym, or go shopping. Again, we’re the lucky ones.

We’ve found ourselves with lamb’s blood on our doorposts and, for that, we should be exceedingly grateful.¹ Yet our gratitude should not remain simply a feeling. Whether or not you share my faith, I hope you can appreciate the Lord’s words when He said, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be expected.”²

Indeed, we have been given much and that leaves us with much responsibility. Not only should we serve and give as much as it is safe to do so in the present moment but we have a responsibility to look to the future. One day soon, this pandemic will end. There will be a vaccine and it will be safe to go about like we once did. But the world we knew will not be waiting for us on the other side. We will have to sift through the wreckage and rebuild.

America has always risen stronger from crises. Out of the ashes of the Civil War rose our Industrial Revolution. In the wake of The Great Depression and both World Wars, America emerged a global superpower. In the same breath, we put our great power to work rebuilding a world devastated by those wars. There’s no reason to believe we can’t do it again. Indeed, we could even improve on the imperfections of our past renaissances. But this will not happen by accident. The time has passed for throwing up our hands in resignation at the way our country operates. The time has passed for putting our hope in would-be champions who just tell us who to blame. It’s time to do the hard work of building a better society. Those of us spared by this pandemic must rightly bear the lion’s share of that burden.

Make no mistake, it will take all of us, whether or not we got off easy this time. Lucky though we may be, saviors we are not. But a great man once instructed us to “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”³ When we ask ourselves that question, some of us will inevitably find we can do more. And, when some of us cannot, the responsibility falls to the rest of us to pick up the slack. Let us embrace that responsibility. Let us choose to be our brothers’ keepers. And let us build a better world from the remains of the old.