A very unusual Sunday in our country, many churches closed or at risk due to the coronavirus. There’s concern and panic. 

I elected this Sunday morning to travel down to the Sardis Cemetery in Colquitt County, Georgia. 

As a child, I heard the story of my uncle’s death, Loren Curtis Chapman. He would have been my uncle, my mother’s brother. My grandmother, Elizabeth Butler Chapman, age 38, said she held him in her arms and rocked him as the 6-month-old closed his eyes, stiffened up and passed from this world. Her eyes always looked distant and moist as she told me the story several times as a child. When the story ended, there was always a tear on her cheek as she said, “I  laid him on the bed in the front room at 4 a.m.“ This was December 2, 1933.

I can stand in that room now and see the rocker she used that December day. The house was newer then, built in 1930.

That same morning, her husband, A.P., walked thorough the field to the cane patch and told his own father, Preston Beauregard Chapman, age 82, that the boy had died. My great-grandfather said, “poor little fellow” and continued working. 

My grandfather then admonished him for being in the field working sick, sweating profusely on such a cold freezing morning.

“You are going to get sick,” he said. “Go inside the house.”  He worked longer and did not heed his son’s advice. The work had to be done. 

That afternoon, just 12 hours later, the family assembled at Sardis Cemetery and buried little Loren Curtis. My grandfather, A.P. Chapman, made the coffin, as he did some of that in the barn for his community. He made a resting place for his own son. That in itself is hard to fathom.

 My grandmother used a verse on the gravestone from her literary studies, “Sleep on sweet babe and take thy rest, he called thee home, he thought it best.”

Unbelievably, the next day, Sunday, December 3, at 12:30 pm, A.P.’s  father, my great-grandfather, Preston, became ill and died of pneumonia. The cane patch did him in. Both were buried the same week at the Sardis Cemetery. 

It was pneumonia, a leading cause of death in this country until sulfa was introduced in 1939. The pandemic was in 1918-1919. The epidemic continued in ’20s and ’30s. Loren missed the discovery of sulfa by less than ten years. 

I wondered today where little Loren caught the virus, as we hide and sequester ourselves with hand sanitizer and limited mobility. I wondered if it could have been church. Granddaddy was a preacher. He didn’t miss. But who knows. 

I marvel at the faith of this family which was never shaken by these two untimely deaths. The children went on to college, some becoming Bible teachers and ministers. My grandmother was not bitter from the experience. She was a gentle, kind soul, forgiving and modest, living a life devoid of drama and controversy always thankful for what she had. 

As we are thrust into the savage whirlwind this week of uncertainty and doubt, we must remember that truly God is in control, sovereign, all powerful, unchangeable, omnipresent and infinitely good to name a few attributes. 

Isaiah 41:13 gives comfort. So do the Psalms. We approach the week with uncertainty but we know this world is a temporary harbor and that heaven awaits those who recognize Jesus as the Way, even in a pandemic. 

Dr. Ted Ary, a Colquitt County native, operates podiatry offices in Albany and Moultrie. This article originally appeared on his blog, sundaygotomeetin.com.