At times, it feels like we are balancing on the edge of a precipice. Behind us is the safe land that we are used to. Ahead is uncharted territory and it seems like there is a possibility that the way forward is a steep fall into oblivion.
It’s normal to want to try to step back off the cliff and not to go into so much danger. This is something that happens again and again throughout our lives. The difference is that, right now, we are all experiencing this unbalanced feeling at the same time.
People throughout the world are scared and don’t know which way to turn for answers. Christians should know better but, it seems that, this huge step is frightening for most Christians as well.
We’ve never experienced something of this magnitude. There have been pandemics before but never something that is being covered by a 24/7 news cycle. The news sensationalizes everything about this virus as a way to both build ratings and to push their philosophical agenda.
Those Christians and others who are trying to inject a voice of calm are denounced as fools and worse. Why? Because being calm doesn’t build ratings and it doesn’t advance agendas.
Still, it is what it is. This is a devastating virus for many individuals who fall into at-risk groups. Even more troubling are that individuals outside the known risks have contracted it and have suffered greatly and/or have died. There are suppositions as to why that is happening but, as yet, no answers.
That makes most of us wonder if they or a loved one could become devastating ill if they catch it.
People are afraid of the future and want more than ever to return to normal. I’ve heard other Christians wish for this return to normal just this week. After I heard this, I got to thinking about the times when my life had been turned upside down in truly awful ways.
Notably, was when my son became ill at age 18 and passed away. It also happened when, at two different times, two of my nephews died. There is something so wrong about young people dying. It shakes the foundation of your beliefs and of what is right and what is wrong.
I know that I would have willingly taken the place of any of these three young men. I had lived a longer life and wanted that for them as well.
However, we aren’t given that choice. God has a plan and a purpose and he is revealing it in his time. When my son was ill and struggling greatly with a vicious form of leukemia, I asked him if he ever asked God why this was happening to him.
His answer was both sure and simple. He said, “No. God is using me just as I asked him to do.” When he gave his life to Jesus he asked God to use him to further his message. Having asked, he knew that God would, indeed, use him. He didn’t know how, when or where. However, he wasn’t going to rail against God for doing just what he had asked him to do.
Since that time, I have adopted the same attitude. I don’t ask why. When something seems to shatter my life, I stop and adjust, adapt and, with God’s help, keep moving forward.
Our life with Jesus is a race and we know that at the end of the race, heaven awaits us. We are to move forward and stop looking behind. What happened in the past is behind us and the future is wide open.
I’ve also learned that the “normal” that I have left behind in these different times of uncertainty were times when I had felt comfortable. Actually, I felt complacent. I was so on top of my game that I felt like I could control my world. I would begin to leave God out of the equation of my life.
When the shake-ups happened and I had to start over afterwards, I would move forward into a new type of normal. Looking back, I have realized every single time, that I would not want to go back to the me that I was before. I certainly would have wanted the three young men in my life not to have died but that wasn’t a choice I was given. It was out of my control.
What was in my control was me and my attitude towards God and towards my life. That is what I would never want to step back from. The future was better than what had come before. I was closer to God and I was being built into a person who could face life and adversity from a stronger point with a deepening dependance on my Lord and Savior.
The Bible tells us that, in the last days, God will pour out his spirit on all of mankind. If we are all experiencing a re-awakening of God and belief in the saving grace of Jesus, just imagine what can come of it! Just one person can make a huge difference but if millions or even billions of individuals break through and live for God in a stronger way, just imagine what can happen.
The thing that I am getting to is that up here on this edge that we are on, it isn’t really a cliff. It is a jumping off point. When this pandemic passes, as it will someday, we can either retreat to what we were before or we can trust God and leap forward into the new future he has waiting for us.
I know what I will be doing and, even now, I’m warming up to jump forward as far as I possibly can.
Philippians 3:10-14
I want to know Christ — yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.