One by one...

The lambs are gathered home.

The Campbell kids, lined up for church. Dan’s the taller, toothless boy on the left.

On Sunday, my brother Dan, who preaches at Dudman Springs Church in southwest Missouri, implored his flock to get the COVID vaccine. I was watching on Facebook Live, and I was cheering.

Dan’s home-grown. He’s what you call the “real deal.” He played football at the local high school and also at the local college. He’s a popular referee and umpire and if you don’t know my brother, you at least know his name. As such, his words carry a unique kind of weight.

He is also at the tip of a very important spear. I am slowing coming around to believing that no amount of shouting or sneering from those of us on the coasts will turn the tide for the souls in the middle, the people who live in Missouri, in Kentucky, in Ohio, and who have a hard time wrapping their minds around the importance of the COVID vaccine.

Instead, it will be people like my brother saying what he said on Sunday, that getting vaccinated is beyond politics, that if you want to protect your family and yourself, you’ll get the vaccine.

Down the road, he said into the camera, we’ll look back at our resistance to this and wonder what precisely we were fighting against. Or for.

You have to understand that while it’s easy to speak up about vaccinations and masks when you’re in the majority (say, in Connecticut), it takes a special kind of backbone to do so when you’re surrounded by nay-sayers. Honest to God, if I was in Missouri right now, I’d hug Daniel Smith Campbell Jr. around his neck.

Meanwhile, Mercy Hospital in nearby Springfield, Mo., has opened a third COVID ICU unit, while people prepare to flock to the super-spreader event that is the Ozark Empire Fair, where one estimate said 6 out of 10 people who will crowd onto the rides and into the lines for fried dough are unvaccinated. Meanwhile, St. Louis health officials said they’d reinstate a mask mandate, and Missouri’s attorney general (and U.S. Senate candidate), Eric Schmitt, vowed to fight it. We’d add him to the prayer list, but have decided to shake the dust off our sandals on this one.

So, in keeping with my brother’s sermon:

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Well, that’s your business.

Are you vaccinated out of a love of your neighbor? Well, that’s ours.

Love your neighbor. Get the shot.