It’s vital to remember that we not only experienced his forgiving grace at the moment of our conversion, but continually experience his grace as a lovingly patient process of restoration. God has forgiven you again and again, he has restored you to himself again and again, and he will continue to do so again and again.

Remember the Gospel
It is important to have a well-oiled, activated gospel memory. It’s important to require yourself never to forget. Few things are more spiritually benefiting than rehearsing the story of God’s rescuing, forgiving, and restoring grace in your life. It’s vital to remember that we not only experienced his forgiving grace at the moment of our conversion, but continually experience his grace as a lovingly patient process of restoration. God has forgiven you again and again, he has restored you to himself again and again, and he will continue to do so again and again.
God knows that between the “already” and the “not yet,” living in a fallen world and with sin still inside of us, we will mess up. There will be times when we think, desire, and do wrong things. There will be times when we willingly step outside of God’s holy boundaries. This side of eternity we will sin. This is why God’s commitment to forgive us and restore us is so beautiful and hopeinspiring. If you are at all humble, then you know you’re not perfect. You know no day in your life is totally sin-free. You know you are a person in need of daily forgiveness.
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I may not have visited previously but, during the shutdowns, I enjoyed the large air-conditioned sanctuary, filled with people of all ages in their Sunday clothes, singing, praying, listening, smiling, and visiting with their faces unobscured. At Easter, large groups gathered joyfully and at ease at catered potlucks when most mainstream churches required masks indoors, “distanced,” and did not share food. I am not sure how we are going to find our way from this terrible and strange period, with so much confusion and division, harm and loss, but perhaps sharing stories of our experiences may help us grow in strength and wisdom. I am grateful for the many outsiders, who have saved my heart and my health and continue to during this unprecedented time.

For most of my adult life, groups have strengthened my well-being – church services, singing groups, women’s groups, writing classes, book discussions, drum circles, support groups. When times were especially hard, I attended two religious services on Sundays – my beloved Quaker Meeting in the morning, often with my two children when they were growing up, and then an Episcopal service Sunday evenings at 5:30 PM with Holy Communion.
One could always show up at church, maybe on a Wednesday night or a Sunday morning or evening. In mid-March 2020, all that ended suddenly in total shutdowns as though a zombie apocalypse descended, as I imagined from the books my sons read in their adolescence.
I didn’t have cable TV so I did not get the constant stream of messages, but I had the Internet and Facebook and my partner, now husband, had cable, so I saw the messages occasionally. We had to stay home to prevent the spread of a deadly disease, said commentators on TV. We had to do this to keep the hospitals from being “overwhelmed.” And yet, the medium-sized ER department down the street from my house never had more than four to ten cars in the lot for two and half years. Schools were shut down, and students and teachers sent home. Something very strange was happening.
With measures so severe, I expected we would see more visible tragedy around us – for example, news of a close neighbor losing two family members to Covid, including their primary breadwinner, and they needed people to bring food, help with rides, and childcare. We may have received email messages from church pastors, saying that several church members died suddenly of Covid and needed meals and money, visits and yardwork.
I have usually been on such lists and usually signed up to help. We might have gotten calls from multiple family members or friends, across the county, reporting relatives dying from Covid. When I worked with Iraqi refugees living in the US through the International Rescue Committee (IRC), my new Iraqi friend had lost her husband and her successful business. Among Iraqis, she told me, every family she knew had lost at least one person in the war. Death was everywhere, all around them. They didn’t have to check the TV to see if it was out there.
If this crisis was “a war,” as the politicians and bureaucrats told us from their podiums, a war that necessitated shutting down our entire society, isolating terrified children in their houses and away from their schools and friends and extended families, then why were we not seeing dead bodies in the streets, red lights flashing? Why were we not hearing sirens throughout the night? Why weren’t my friends and family around the county and around the world – or my husband’s friends and family calling us about relatives dying? Asking us to help bury the dead? I have many friends and acquaintances over many years. So does my husband.
I chatted with my neighbor over our yards. She had to close down her business. I asked her if she knew of anyone who had “it.” She said she had heard of someone at the retirement community who knew someone who had “it,” and they had to “quarantine.” My mother, who now lived near me, was very involved with the local senior center, which has a large membership. I asked her if she knew people with Covid or who had died of it. No, she said, fortunately, she didn’t know anyone. Her sister in a nursing home in North Carolina had tested positive, though, and had mild or no symptoms.
I know people died of this disease, and, of course, we mourn all deaths. I simply was not seeing the “war” around me, as it was portrayed, as justification for forced government shutdowns of all human communities. I remember spring 2020 in Virginia as more glorious than most, with fresh abundance of sharper and more varied greens and lovely soft color, crisp clear skies, and practically empty streets.
I didn’t know what was happening. I missed my meetings and my churches. For addicted friends and loved ones, I knew that the fellowship of 12-step meetings was a lifeline. Groups  and churches were mine; most were not meeting.
I drove around one Sunday during the Easter season, thinking surely some churches would still be open. Maybe I could now visit some that I had wanted to but hadn’t because I didn’t want to miss my friends and the services I loved. The Methodist church? Dark with an empty parking lot. A Baptist church near my house? Empty. The old stone building of the historic Episcopal Church? Vacant.
I saw online that 12-step meetings were not meeting in person either. Only on Zoom. Usually there were several meetings a week all over town. I had attended 12-step meetings for family and friends of addicts and alcoholics at various churches over the years. For my entire adult life, in all the cities where I had lived, addicts and alcoholics, and their families, could attend a meeting every day, if they needed to, and sometimes more than once a day. All shut down. How would we get through this? When and how would it end?
In the winter of 2020, a friend told me that an AA meeting was held in a nearby park every day at noon. Craving group fellowship, I drove there for the meeting a couple of times and sat with them in the cold. Though I am not an alcoholic, I felt grateful they were there, huddled in coats with their hats and scarves.
I was not able to wear a mask for extended periods because of health challenges. All over the media and on social media, people proclaimed that there were no health conditions that made masking not possible or not healthy. What about PTSD in people who had been smothered or had had their face forcibly covered during an assault?  Or PTSD in people who had survived traumas yet built safety for themselves by being able to read faces? What about children or adults with autism whose learning and navigation of the world depends on reading faces?
What about anxiety or panic disorders that may worsen dangerously with oxygen depletion or with the inability to read facial cues? What about sensory impairments or mobility issues, exacerbated when people can’t breathe freely or when their peripheral vision may be impaired with long mask wearing? What had happened to our compassion and sensitivity to differences and to challenges?
Though most mainstream churches closed, in summer, fall, and winter of 2020 and into 2021, the outsider churches – and outsider people — sustained me. They became what we might call speakeasy churches. I searched the Internet and found a country church a short drive from my house and emailed the pastor and his wife.
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Here is good news: The Lord is committed to guarding the rose. He has given us a new heart, a holy heart; and he has told us that he will watch over it with all of his heart. He has sealed it for himself. He has said, “I am a jealous God.” The triune God of the Bible has sworn: Though dark, secret loves beckon and entice my children and my Bride, they will not prevail.

But I have this against you: You have left your first love.So then: Remember the place from which you have fallen,and repent and do the first works.(Revelation 2:3-4)
This word arrived as a gut punch to the Ephesians. It can do the same when we read it today.
Before it hit, the Lord was all commendation, praising these busy Christians for their toil, endurance, and holy intolerance of evil. After it hit, he did the same, lauding them for their hatred of the lawless works of the Nicolaitans. But in between there came a stern and urgent reproof, flashing like dark lightning against a deep blue sky. What can account for it?
When I asked myself this question, a memorable poem by William Blake came to mind:
O Rose, thou are sick.The invisible wormThat flies in the night,In the howling storm,Hath found out thy bedOf crimson joy:And his dark secret loveDoth thy life destroy.
When people looked at the Ephesian rose, all seemed well. These believers were abounding in the work of the Lord. What’s more, to judge from the King’s commendations, they were doing their works in the Spirit and power of the Lord. This should give us pause: Though the Lord may be granting us fruitful labors, it also may be that a dark and dangerous love has begun to creep, worm-like, into our bed of crimson joy: into the life of love that was purchased for the Bride of Christ by his blood.
But what exactly was the nature of that invisible worm? And how was it enticing the Ephesians to leave their first love?
Perhaps we find our answers in a story about Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38ff). The Lord had come to town. Martha invited him into her home for dinner. Her sister Mary sat herself at the Lord’s feet, listening to his words. But Martha was distracted with her many preparations.
What’s more, she was angry. With an unholy boldness that shocks the reader, it is written that she came up to the Son of God himself and said, ““Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Tell her to help me!” But the Lord, wise and gentle, answered with firmness: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is truly necessary. I’m saying this because Mary has chosen the best part, and it will not be taken from her.” 
Is this how it was with the Ephesians? Yes, their service was partly in the Spirit; but was it also partly in the flesh? Was it partly motivated by a sincere love for the Lord, but also by some “dark, secret love” that was creeping into the sacred space?
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