The most extreme case of social distancing the world has ever know was, ironically, in the very beginning of creation. God made the world, then made a man, Adam. That man was now fully alive and completely perfect in an absolutely flawless environment. I cannot help but wonder how incomprehensibly grand the sunrises and sunsets were in a world without any hint of pollution in the sky. And how amazing must it have been to have all of the glory of the animal kingdom there before him as Adam lived in an unfallen world where nothing killed or consumed anything else?
And yet for all of that glory and grandeur, something was still not quite right. And thus it was that in Genesis 2:18 God looked on that situation and said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” What followed that pronouncement was the creation of Eve, the one woman who knew what it was like to never have cellulite, a bad hair day, mood swings or the angst of looking through a closet and saying “I haven’t got a thing to wear!”
Adam had everything, yet he had no one. Until there was another human being nearby, until there was actual human contact, even paradise was “not good.”
As I write this, our family is preparing for Thanksgiving and for the entire holiday season beyond it. There is no time of year I enjoy any better than Thanksgiving Day through Christmas Day, with New Year’s Day as the cherry on top. This is the time of year that I will be consumed with thoughts of God becoming flesh, carols being sung, turkeys and ham being prepared, trees being decorated, poor families being surprised by the generosity of God’s people, the crackling of the fireplace (though, to be completely accurate, our gas logs hiss more than crackle) trips through cheerily lit areas, “Snoopy’s Christmas” as sung by The Royal Guardsmen (trust me, it is epic) and all things Grinch, Scrooge and claymation Rudolph.
But among those wonderful things I will also be eternally grateful for the human contact of the entire holiday season.