What Have the Last Few Months Helped Us Realize?
If these last few months have taught us anything, it is how fragile our personal lives are and how disruptive change can be to our once predictable life. If we think we can do life alone without help, these last eighteen months have taught us otherwise.
Our lives are as fragile as fine china. If we were to hold a piece of china to the light, we can see through it. This is true even of the wonderful things that bring sparkle to our life with joy, like winning a million-dollar lottery, discovering a long-awaited vaccine against cancer, or finally receiving that long-sought promotion. Even so, our lives still rest on shaky ground.
Our proof rests upon the happenings of these last eighteen months. The Covid-19 pandemic has taken more than 700,000 lives, radically changed the way we gaze at our long-time neighbors, and turned what was our normal lives into a fading memory.
We have made changes in our everyday lives: like socializing with family and friends, how we worship, and yes, even how we work. Changes and adjustments have replaced what was regular and routine. It is as if our lives are driven more now by our GPS than our free-will.
However, God is the one entity that has stayed unchanged as has his love for us. Through all these seismic happenings, we cannot forget that our loving and concerned God wants us here. We don’t realize this often enough.
God is always working for us. We may not see God at work, and because of this we often lose faith journeying through our daily activities. We need to remain constantly dependent on God. Why? Simply because God’s grace continuously operates within us, sustaining us, whether the days be bright and sunny, or dark and dangerous. God is always our first responder. God is “with us all days, even until the world’s ending.” Our dependency on God keeps the conduit of love ever flowing.
The late Henry Nouwen wrote: “Every creature is born out of love of God, sustained by God in love, and transformed in love.” How God manages to do this, says Nouwen, “…are ways known only by God?” A lesson we need to realize and believe.
God’s ways are not our ways. We cannot judge God through a human magnifying glass. God often writes straight with crooked lines simply to help us choose him, and his love. This is the bottom line of our belief and trust in this loving, powerful God. He does it his way to keep us connected.
God gives us tools for surviving on this earth. They are our gifts, given to use and share, and his image and likeness which delights God with his gaze in our direction. God will always relish our adoption, for it is wrapped with his covenant. Our God is no idle promise maker. He keeps his word.
Our response is to be humbly grateful for God’s gifts of life and love. Whenever we turn to neighbors, anywhere in our world, and serve their needs, God is adored and thanked.
One day during the civil war, a cabinet member of President Lincoln said: “I will pray that the Lord is on our side in this conflict.” Lincoln responded quickly saying: “I’m not concerned whether God is on our side as much as I’m concerned whether I am on God’s side.”
As we pass this way, but once, we need worry more whether we are on God’s side in all we do and choose- rather than if God is on ours.
