It’s been a hard year overall, though not entirely because of Covid. I know one person who died of the virus and many others who had it and recovered without incident. For months, our church has offered two services to allow people to spread out and livestreams one of them for the third of the congregation who won’t return until doctors give them a green light. (For only a few more days, you can watch the recording of our Christmas concert. I’m becoming increasingly dissatisfied with my singing voice, but the rest of the choir and the instrumentalists are great.)

Tennessee has surged in new cases, but it still feels removed from us, at least by a step. I’ve worried about my aunt, who says she lives around many people who have tested positive, but she hasn’t picked it up. My wife and I have been exposed to it technically; two of my daughters could easily have been as well, but we’ve not had reason to pursue tests for it. Like I said, it feels a bit removed from us.

More immediate has been the tornado damage to one of our suburbs. The video above was taken on Tuesday this week and shows the edge of an area that tornados ripped up in April. Large houses were flattened, some smaller ones too, and others were skipped as tornadoes do. The trees tell most of the story. You won’t see the many houses behind me, completely destroyed, or my high school, that had built up since my days there but now has been scraped to the ground. Every building was compromised in the storm.

We had been in lock down for a few weeks when this happened. All of that was shelved when we turned out to clean up streets, help neighbors recover, and share food. I helped a church team build several storage sheds on our parking lot, which other members of the church and community used. (I plan to put up a smaller one in my backyard this year.)

New routines have come since then; normal has taken a hiatus.

I’ve heard many sermons on living a quiet, respectable life of prayer and service based on this passage: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:1-4 ESV).

Sometimes I wonder if the quite life is evangelical enough. I wonder if we live in noisy times and need bold witnesses to confront materialistic, entertainment-driven people who take their values from today’s famous who are only justifying actions they haven’t thought through. But I also think it’s peaceful, quiet people who clean up storm-damaged neighborhoods, who look after widows and shut-ins, and who take the time to pray for everyone they can think of. They aren’t people looking to make a name for themselves.

Will we continue to nurture the quiet life in 2021 or distract ourselves from it?