The air was crisply clean and shimmering with sun particles out on the rail trail this afternoon. After feeling restricted and shut in the past few days, being out in the open and smiling at people refreshed me. I passed several spring vernal pools alive with the sound of peeper frogs waking up, a sensation that reminded me of the unending changing of the seasons. Matthew 24: 32 records these words of Jesus. “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.” For me here in New England I have learned the lesson of the peeper frog: As soon as the multitude of them begin their chirping call, I know that spring is near, even though patches of ice still remain on the pools. Night turns to day. Winter turns to spring. Struggles pass and suffering heals. And novel viruses settle down and we carry on. I am reassured.

I remember the fear of a different kind of devastation – global nuclear destruction, a fear though all of my childhood and much of my adult life. In elementary schools we had nuclear drills when we had to hide under our desks. And the movies that portrayed that fear, even twenty-five years later, were about the aftermath of nuclear war, like The Day After in 1983. We still live with nuclear weapons in our time, but the Cold War terror has ended. In 2002 the novel virus we named SARS terrorized us for two years, and then it settled down. Now novel virus COVID-19 is our common fear. But sooner or later, it too will settle down. There will always be something frightening coming and then going until Jesus sets everything to right in his wholly new Creation. I am reassured.

This winter I read the 1827 Italian novel The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. The time period of the story was the 1600’s, including the year 1630 in which bubonic plague ravaged northern and central Italy. Many of the characters I cared for, and some that I didn’t, died in the epidemic. But not all, and the young couple who are the betrothed both survived the plague. As they considered all they had been through, trying to make sense of it, their thoughts at the very end of the story stuck with me, and the reflections that the vernal pool stirred up in me, brought that ending back to mind.

“Renzo [the male betrothed] did not know what to say for a moment. But after a long debate, and much heart-searching they came to the conclusion that troubles very often come because we have asked for them; but that even the most prudent and innocent of conduct is not necessarily enough to keep them away; also that when they come, through our fault or otherwise, trust in God goes far to take away their sting, and make them a useful preparation for a better life.”

I am reassured.