Mind Your Own Business

GUEST BLOGGER - KAREN GREENWOOD

At times like this, it seems that it’s the epidemiologists who know us best. Our habits and tendencies, our stubborn refusals and willful ignorance. Number-crunching and probability modeling can tell you a lot. And we are, in many respects, predictable animals.

So, what do predictable animals do in unpredictable times? That’s the question of the day. 

Our pastors remind us that the church is not a building or a place. It’s a collection of people. Be the church, they say, right where you are, with your hand sanitizers and face masks at the ready. Reach out to those in need, be patient with each other. Let people see the love of Christ in you. That’s what the church does.

Right now, this involves “social distancing,” washing your hands, and not gathering in groups. Changing our behavior, the experts insist, is the only means we have, until a vaccine is available, to slow the spread of COVID-19.

But are we willing to alter our behavior enough to help ourselves, not to mention the people around us?  Results so far have been decidedly mixed. Too many people, it seems, either don’t get it or just don’t want to hear it.

I’m betting on the latter.

Maybe it’s the circles I move in, but I’ve had the misfortune to know, and sometimes love, too many people who’d rather blow up everything than take a hard look at themselves and maybe adjust some of their own thinking and behavior. This is what love, and of course all honest relationships, sometimes demand. But fear, it turns out, is the worst contagion of all.

Still, our marching orders as Christians are pretty clear. Take care of each other. When Cain asked the Lord, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord didn’t dither. His response, and I’m paraphrasing, “Yes.”

My husband went to Home Depot recently. Spring is just around the corner, and our grass seed stock is low. In the parking lot, a man and woman stood near a car, arguing. Their agitated voices grew louder, as my husband passed.

The man hovered menacingly in the woman’s space. Then he started pushing her, shoving her back against the car. My husband froze on the spot. “Hey,” he called, “you can’t do that. Knock it off.”

The pusher glared. “Mind your own business.”

Another shopper passed, a middle-aged man with a ball cap pulled low over his eyes. “I wouldn’t get involved, if I were you,” he advised my husband and continued into the store.

The pusher was a big, strong-looking guy, not somebody a sane person would want to mess with. My husband pulled out his phone and dialed 9-1-1. 

The pusher saw the phone, jumped his car, and fled the scene. He knew what was coming next. “He’s leaving,” my husband told the 9-1-1 dispatcher, who advised him to send the woman to the police station to file a report. 

 The woman approached my husband, in tears. She assured him that she would go straight to the police. “God bless you,” she said, hurrying away.

The shopper with the ballcap did not reemerge from the store during this fracas. And if anyone else in the parking lot noticed, they pretended that they didn’t. 

Mind your business.

The terrorized woman prayed that God would bless my husband for minding her business. 

 So, where does my business end and your business begin? And when does taking care of each other officially become our collective business?

 I’d say a pandemic is a good time to start.