NCAA basketball tournaments, ACC mens basketball tournament, NBA, NHL, Major League baseball spring training, church worship services, concerts, public schools, and private schools either closed or cancelled. Grocery store shelves empty of essentials like bread, milk, and toilet paper. Though I look out my window and see flora coming back to life after a winter slumber, the cancellations and closures are like there is a blanket of snow 5 feet deep. It is March, and there is a new kind of “March madness” that has nothing to do with basketball games but everything to do with public health and well-being. Though I have lived many decades, I don’t believe I have seen anything quite like what I have seen in the last few days. There is an air of uncertainty about the health of people and the financial vitality of our nation as the stock market soars downward.
Amid it all, God has whispered a message to me and it is this: what is certain is not sports or the bullishness of the stock market. What we can count on is not that the church doors will always be open or that your team will compete in the March madness games. What we can count on and what is certain is the presence, power, and peace of the One who said long ago to his disciples (including some who doubted): “Surely I am with you always, even to the close of the age” (see Matthew 28: 20). As a dying John Wesley said on his death bed: “The best of all is this: God is with us.” - Pastor Randy Wall
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