Although “social distancing” was added to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary in 2003, I’d wager it entered American public consciousness in 2020 with the spread of the novel coronavirus SARS CoV-2. The majority of us are keeping the recommended minimum of six-feet in between. Last week I witnessed in our neighborhood what appeared to be a birthday party. There were cars in the street, balloons on the mailbox, and people eating cake…in the front yard at least ten feet from each other.
Most churches (and worshippers of other faiths) have moved their gatherings online via Facebook Live or prerecorded services played on Sunday mornings. Sunday School classes, LifeGroups, and other small groups have largely moved to Zoom, Google Hangouts, or FaceTime. Many who have been doing so recognize that, even though it is better than nothing, it is not the same as being in person. This morning, we had great participation in our Zoom LifeGroup. We shared scripture, testimony, and prayer. There were tears and laughter. But, it still was not like our normal 6:00pm in-person gathering at the Coffee Connection on our church’s campus. 
If there is one thing we learn from the Incarnation of Jesus (his coming to Earth as the God-man) it is that embodiment is important. And, the proximity of our bodies is important. Jesus frequently separated himself from others for prayer or fasting or rest, but he always returned to them. He allowed people to touch him; even unclean people who, according to customs of the day, should not have. After his resurrection Jesus appeared many times to many groups of people. He offered his physical body as proof of his resurrection from the dead. He came with a body and he left with a body. No spectre was he.
Recently, I saw a brilliant explanation of the dissonance some experience when physical presence shifts to virtual absence. On Twitter, Gianpiero Petriglieri related a conversation with a therapist friend. The money quote is the second tweet: It’s easier being in each other’s presence, or in each other’s absence, than in the constant presence of each other’s absence.
The forced distancing so many of us are enduring right now, and the longing so many followers of Jesus have for when we can see each other again in the flesh, seems to be a foreshadowing of Heaven.
Christians have long called themselves “the family of God” of which we are glad to be a part. This family includes all the redeemed of all time, not simply those in our small group or church. Moses is a part. Abraham is a part. Ruth is a part. Abigail is a part. The Apostles are a part, as are Aquila and Priscilla, Apollos, Onesimus, John Chrysostom, St. John of the Cross, St. Augustine, Gladys Aylward, Bertha Smith, Praying John Hyde, Watchman Nee, Amy Carmichael, Frederick Douglass, Billy Graham, Mincaye, Mother Teresa, George Liele, and billions of others whose names are recorded and whose names are not.
Through the centuries God’s family has grown but has never—not a single time since Mr and Mrs Adam and Eve and family—been gathered at the same place at the same time. God’s people have always been subject to distancing whether social, geographic, epochal, or celestial. We have never been all together.
But, Heaven will altogether change that.
Imagine the longing you have right now to be re-gathered with your family and friends, the internal hurt of physical separation, of feeling like those you love are off at war when they are hunkered down but two miles away. Of the disembodied unreality of being present yet absent, the “consistent presence of each other’s absence.” Now imagine that longing wholly sanctified in the presence of countless saints, the redeemed of all time, in the presence of Jesus Christ and each other. The longest separation will be no more.
Perhaps, this was in the corner of Paul’s mind when he wrote, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). We are not yet fully known because we cannot know fully, and we cannot know fully because we are separated from those we will know. When gathered with those who have gone before (which some of us currently living will become, given time) our anticipation will finally be fulfilled in a way that will make earthly shadows flee in eternal glories.
But, until that day we have these days, and in these days we wait. We wait for social distancing to be suspended, for embodied fellowship to resume, for presence to displace absence, for harmony to replace dissonance, and for the risen Lord Jesus to be again worshipped and adored in the physical gathering of his saints.
