We run around talking about hate. This group hates that one. That group hates someone else. We are told that it is part of the system in which we live.

In a way, that is true. The system isn’t one government or another. It isn’t one race versus another. It isn’t one ethnicity versus another.

The system that we live in is that of the sin of humankind.

When we rebelled against God, we opened the door for the evil one (Satan) to come in and rule our hearts. We severed the connection with the one who is love and embraced the one who is death and hatred. We began to wage war against our Creator, God.

There isn’t one of us who isn’t guilty of this type of hate. It just manifests differently depending on whom we are. We don’t learn deceit and hate. Sadly, it comes naturally, since we are born in servitude to the being who is hate.

We were not made to be hateful. We were made to be in communion with God and to love one another. Because of our wish to be like God, we lost the ability to truly love like he does. We know only how to hate.

It doesn’t surprise me that, in this day and age where people no longer believe in God, that this hate is boiling over. It is splashed across the news. We can see hate when a police officer pins a man by his neck to the ground until he dies. We see hate when people run wild in the streets rioting and looting and harming and killing one another in some of distorted way of honoring the man who was murdered.

Protests are not evil but doing harm to others is. There is no redeeming quality to killing people or in harming your neighbors. There is nothing eternally gained by stealing and destroying. There is only destruction.

That destruction is not just to the city you live in but to your own soul. That kind of hate corrodes you and hardens your heart to hearing the good news of Jesus.

Jesus saw the wretched state of our souls and he still loved us. He loved us so much that he was willing to die for us.

Imagine if you were found guilty of the most heinous type of crime imaginable and, when the Guilty verdict was read, someone you didn’t even know came forward and said they would take your death sentence and allow you to live. Imagine then that you somehow convinced yourself that that person deserved to die and not you. Imagine then that you were the one that nailed him to the cross.

Imagine that same person wasn’t just another human being. Imagine if he was also the God who created the universe simply by the words of his mouth.

It just isn’t fathomable to our brains. Humans don’t behave like that. That’s why humans could never be the perfect sacrifice that was demanded to forever make the relationship right between God and man.

A human is sinful in their own right and their verdict is already Guilty. They can’t take the punishment of another because they already deservedly share in that same punishment.

God had to come to the earth himself. He lived as a man (while still fully God) and lived sinlessly. That way, he could offer himself, an innocent man who, on his own, did not share in our punishment.

Just as one man (Adam) brought sin into the world and broke our spiritual relationship with God, one man (Jesus) was able to repair that relationship and bring forgiveness for our sins into the world.

We need to see it and acknowledge it. We need to know that we are guilty and that we deserve our sentence of death. We each need to accept that Jesus died for each of us. We then need to make the decision to follow him and to strive to life as he asked us to do.

We need to know that hate is in the world but that, as followers of Jesus the Christ, we are called to love and not to hate. In the face of hate, we are to love one another. We are even to love those who hate us; maybe loving those individuals most of all. It is easy to love those who love you, it is extraordinary to love those who hate you.

The only way to fight the hate that is born into us through our sin is to learn how to truly love. The only way to truly love is to know and follow the only who is love. God loves us and Satan wants to kill us and destroy us.

Who do you want to follow for the rest of your life?

Who do you want to spend eternity serving?

For me, without question, it is God.

James 4:1-10

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says,

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

We are a rebellious people. We rebel against both good things and bad things. It seems like when things are going well, we’re happy. However, the moment that things go awry, we are up at arms.

Some times, it is a good thing and at other times, it is not.

The country I live in righteously rebelled against tyranny and was born out of that rebellion. There are other countries where this type of rebellion is still playing out. Those countries don’t seem to be having the same result that we did more than two hundred years ago.

I’m not really sure why. Perhaps evil has grown ever more powerful. Maybe it is because the tyrants have an easier time in quashing rebellion in this day and age. They don’t have to spend months transporting troops to a hostile climate with no supply chain right behind them.

There are rebellions that go the other way. Ones in which people are fighting to be allowed to become enslaved by their government. They are willing to trade their freedom for a sense of security. They don’t want the blessing that they have because of the sacrifices of their ancestors. They would rather have what they consider an easy life.

The problem, of course, is that life is never ever easy. We are all born. We all live through a life of strife. We all die.

What’s more, after our physical bodies die, we will all face the judgement of God.

He is the one that mankind first rebelled against. Every generation since that first one has continued to rebel again God.

No matter how present he is in people’s lives, when hardship comes, he is almost always the first to be blamed. He is also the one that people cry out to for him to save them.

I am reminded of the Israelites, who rebelled against God almost immediately after he saved them from slavery in Egypt. Every single time something came up, whether it be Moses going off to commune with God for a time or a desire for meat to eat, people cried out and wished they had never left Egypt. They wished they were back in the bonds of an increasingly cruel tyranny.

God forgave them many times over. However, when he finally led them to the land that he had promised their ancestors, their lack of faith pushed them over the edge.

He had promised that they would easily take the land. However, they allowed their fears to increase and, even though two of their number who had spied on the land and said it would be easy to move into, they cried out against God.

They wished that they had died in Egypt, they wished they had died in the wilderness rather than enter the promised land and die there.

They got their wish. Because of their rebellion and disbelief, God condemned them to wander in the wilderness for forty years until all those adults who had spoke against the promise of God had died.

Their sin had a price even though he forgave them. He came close to wiping them out and starting over with Moses but Moses asked him to forgive them and to work through them. He did so, but the price of their sin lasted their entire life.

We have to be careful what causes we embrace and who our rebellion is really against. If we are embracing God and following his guidance, then our rebellion is just and good. If we are looking for an easy life or are trying to force a cause on others, it is something to look at over and over again before acting.

All sin was forgiven at the cross, the pardon for your sin is there for you to ask for. God can and will forgive you if you believe in the sacrifice made by his beloved son, Jesus.

However, with forgiveness, you may still continue to suffer from the choices you made and that is good and right and just. The suffering will last no longer than this lifetime and perhaps less time; however, forgiveness is for eternity.

2 Timothy 3:1-5

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

People have become so isolated. They are alone and by themselves and wondering how life can have changed so much and so quickly. This was true even before this global pandemic sped the process into hyperdrive.

We’ve learned to live by and for ourselves. We’ve stopped thinking about others first and ourselves second. There are exceptions, of course, mainly for family members.

Even so, I’ve seen this bond of family starting to deteriorate.

I’ve experienced it myself in my own family. Only one hundred years ago, families lived together in multi-generational homes. Aunts, uncles, cousins and so forth mostly lived close to one another.

The advantages were that, during times of stress, you could reach out to and rely on family to help you. Further back in time, people could rely on their neighbors and their villages.

Today, self-reliance is stressed. It is something to be prized. If you can make it on your own, then you have accomplished a great goal. At least in the eyes of society.

But is it a good way to live? Is it something that will truly bring satisfaction? When you are constantly putting yourself first, do you learn to look down on others and to demean them?

I don’t think it is good or healthy. Statistics show mental illness on the rise. Suicides, murder, physical abuse and all growing in number.

It has gotten even worse during our global lockdown. It seems that people are willing to do more evil when no one else is looking.

Surprising? Not really. The Bible tells us that mankind loves the darkness because their ways are evil. Jesus is the light of the world and, in his presence, evil flees. We are told that light casts out darkness.

Of course it does. When you are walking on a dark street, don’t you feel safer if there are lights or if you have a flashlight at hand? Those who are intent on doing evil prefer when the lights are out so they can do what they want without being caught.

I’ve been hearing that, due to the economic conditions and the degradation of mental health because of being kept isolated, we can expect more mental health issues. It is even suggested that the number of suicides and murders may surpass the number of people who have died from the virus itself.

It is so easy to become enmeshed in dark thoughts. It is easy to think that there is no way out but to end life.

That is never true. I know because I learned the hard way myself. When I was a teenager, I became very depressed and wanted to end my own life. I may tell the story of it one day but, for the moment, all I can say is that I am so thankful that I didn’t kill myself.

I look at my life and think how wonderful it has been. Even though I went through hardships and saw people that I loved pass away too early. I saw a marriage fall apart and family members drift away.

At the same time, I found love. I found a love that will never ever leave me. It will never deny me. It will always be there waiting for me. When I do finally pass away, that love will still be mine and will last for eternity.

The love that Jesus had for me existed before I was created. He loved me so, so much that he died for me. If I had taken my own life as a teenager, I would never have learned about his truth. I would never have begun learning from his example. I would have been eternally separated from the love and presence of God.

Here’s the great news for anyone who is depressed and feeling like life isn’t worth living: Jesus’ love is there for you, too. He is waiting for you to seek him and to accept his gift of love.

Please don’t follow through on those thoughts of self harm or that of harming others. Please reach out to the one who loves you just as you are. There is no virus that will stop him and there is no lockdown that will keep Jesus out of your heart if you ask him in.

Jeremiah 29:11-13

“For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

How did we ever get so far from what God wanted for us? Why did we ever think that we were good enough to manage our own fate?

There is a sin that is so prevalent that it has become a matter of pride rather than something to be acknowledged as evil. That sin is pride.

We take pride in our work, our appearance, our intellect, our home, our car, our accomplishments and so much more. Somehow we think that it all exists because of us and that we are entitled to it and more.

Pride isn’t something good, it is evil. It is setting yourself higher than others. It is saying that I am better than you and you can tell by looking at all that I am. I am good and you, not so much.

It is because of our pride that we turn our back on God. We think we have got all that it takes to win at life.

I wonder if the ones who are so proud of themselves ever think that other people are thinking that they are even better?

All of the things that I mentioned above are things that can be lost. Fortunes can be made and fortunes can be lost. Homes, looks, cars, work, intellect and accomplishments can, in the end, come to nothing. At best, others will have better homes, cars, etc. and there is not a thing that anyone can do about it.

Trusting in yourself to the exclusion of God is not going to save you in the end. At the end of your life, you (and everyone else) will face God’s judgement.

Would the God who made the universe and everything in it be amazed at what type of car you drive? Would that same God think much of your house when his home is heaven? How does your intelligence match up to his?

If we are at all wise, we will honor God and work for his purposes and not for own. That kind of wisdom comes only from acknowledging the sacrifice of Jesus, accepting his gift of salvation from sin, knowing God as holy and asking him to do his work through you. It means understanding that nothing we do on our own is worthy of praise, it is the gift that Jesus gave the world that is so worthy.

If you do so seek him with sincerity, he will answer. You will be saved from the wrath of his judgement. Pride will surface again, it always does, but you will know it for a sin. You will know that it is something to avoid and that, if you fall into its trap, you should repent and walk away from it.

God loves those who are humble and has no use for those who are full of pride. Jesus, himself, came as a humble man to show us how to live as God wants us to do. We are to stop following the world and instead follow Jesus and live by his example.

Galatians 6:14

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

A few weeks ago, people were so afraid of the future. Today, I see something new as well. There is still fear for some but, for others, there seems to be a re-awakening hope. They hope that we are getting back to a more sustainable lifestyle. I believe that most know that we can never go back to what we were before.

A panic of this nature fundamentally changes us. It causes us to confront our mortality. It causes us to be fearful of others. Being left to ourselves without contact with others can cause anxiety and depression as well.

I know because I have gone through this for an extended period of time. It changes you. It turns you inside out and brings out both the best and the worst in you.

The same person who can go out and help their neighbors can look askance and worse at someone who goes to the grocery store without a face mask on. They don’t delve into the why but, instead, make judgements.

There are people who cannot afford a mask and have no idea how to make one. There are those who simply cannot wear masks for extended periods because of physical or emotional issues. Still, people will judge them based on what they think those people should be doing.

There is a move to judgement that is endemic to humankind. This type of panic sends that into hyperdrive. It is so much easier to judge others than it is to judge yourself. Not only that, you will easily accept your own excuses and, just as easily, discount those of other people. Where it is somewhat amusing and sad, at the same time, is when it is the exact same excuse. Still, yours is valid and others expressing the same are automatically invalid.

While humans accept our day to day judgements of others as normal, God does not. He takes an entirely different view. He tells us to check on our own failings before we start looking for faults in others.

Now, the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, is all about judgement. In this particular book of the Bible, God tells the children of Israel just how judgement should be meted out. There are some pretty stiff standards to be met and stiffer still punishments.

Those rules, laws and punishments were put in place to keep the national of Israel holy as God’s chosen race. They were chosen not because they were better but because they were the same as others.

However, God wanted this group of people set apart to be those who would carry his Word to the future and to be the people from whom his Salvation would be extended to the world.

Jesus, who was the Salvation of the world, changed our mission and what we were supposed to do. He is the one who told us to take the log from our eye before telling our neighbor about the speck in theirs.

Our virus panic hasn’t caused our judgements to happen, it has just made expressing them aloud somehow acceptable.

We have to stop doing this and find an even keel once again. We have to learn, once again, to live with our neighbors, friends and family and to do so without making judgements.

That isn’t to say that those who break the law should not have to pay society for their crimes. It means that others who have different ways of coping than our ways are not guilty of anything other than being different.

Be glad that God didn’t look at us and judge us as too broken to save. If he loved us in all our differences, how can we do other than to try to follow in his footsteps?

Romans 2:1-3

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?

How out of control are you feeling right now? So many people are complaining about not feeling in control of their lives. They are used to going out and doing what they wish to do when they wish to do so.

I had to confront this scenario a few years ago and, unlike most people, I don’t have a light at the end of the tunnel as far as when I will walk freely and openly again.

I’m not complaining but am letting you know that I feel this, too. However, for most of you, there is a light at that end. You will be able to leave your houses and head out back into the world again. That is a true blessing.

I am blessed as well because I also have a light waiting for me. The tunnel doesn’t really end with the end of our lives, it is what waits for us afterwards that truly matters.

If you look at it the way that God does, our “tunnel” really is our entire lifetime. The end is where we are when the tunnel ends. There are only two choices, eternal life or eternal death.

What we do while we are in our tunnel is what determines our outcome. Do we accept the salvation of Jesus Christ or do we deny him? It is a yes or no answer. There are no moral equivocations. There are no but maybes. There is no other way to get to eternal life; no works, no good thoughts, nothing but the sacrifice Jesus made and whether we accept it or not.

For those who do chose to accept Jesus, the rest of our time in the “tunnel” of life is when and where we learn more about living like him.

The things that we do, at that point, are done to either glorify God or to glorify the world. Again, there are only two choices. God or the world of sin. Your decision.

If you are like most Christians, you will do both. I’ve said it before and I will again. I sin every day in one form or another. Thankfully, God continues to forgive those sins because he knows that we are ever sinners during this lifetime.

I’m at home and waiting for the day when I see my Savior face to face. I’m not in any hurry to get out of the tunnel but, when the time is here, I will be happy to go.

The tunnel we are in from this virus will lift and people will be happy to leave and get back to life. I hope that everyone is, at a deep spiritual level, fundamentally changed by this experience. I hope that people will look back and see the good that came from this experience and that they made a shift to the better in their lives because of it.

I know that has happened to me because of what I have gone through. If I were given a choice to go back to the “me” that I was three years ago, I would not do so. Even if that meant that there was no pain, no problems breathing and that I could be out and about and visit my family any time I felt like doing so.

The trade-off would not be worth it.

I hope that we will all feel the same once the fear of this virus has passed. It’s possible that the threat will always remain to some extent, so I single out fear because it is what is causing us to freeze in place. Fear is powerful and creates havoc in our minds. It is what causes that terrible feeling of loss of control.

God promises us that he will give us hope instead of fear. All we have to do is believe him and call on him to give us comfort instead of fear and a sense of well-being in spirit when the rest of the world seems to be in a never-ending downward spiral. He will answer and your spirits will soar with the knowledge of his everlasting love for you.

Isaiah 40:28-31

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

I am not a very patient individual. I have never been known for being someone who is willing to wait on an outcome. If I could, I would generally jump right to the end and wait for everyone and everything else to catch up to me.

It’s not that I know better, it’s really just that I am unwilling to wait. I’ve always been this way.

I remember being a little girl and how it took forever for holidays to arrive. I would stay awake at night as dates got closer, wondering how I could ever sleep again. Rather than being patient, I was actually anxious.

When I grew older, it turned into something else. I wanted the outcome that I wanted and I was not going to let things go to chance. I didn’t want someone else to step in and divert the expected outcome to something entirely different from what I wanted.

Of course, there were things that I could not control and that’s when anxiety would rear its head. I could be in a fever pitch by the time an event came to pass, whether or not it went the way that I wanted it to pan out. Even standing still and letting things happen seemed like I was falling backwards.

When I could, I would go out of my way to avoid those types of situations. I would rather deal with things that I could control instead of those that I could not.

Somehow, I don’t think that I am so unusual in lack of patience. At a guess, I would say that humankind is pretty much an impatient lot. There are certainly those who do have patience but I believe, based on what I have seen during my lifetime, that they are in the minority.

I’ve been struggling with this my whole life and in the last two years, I have learned that I cannot rush my recovery. I have to wait and scale back my expectations. There are always new goals to be met. When I first started my journey after being so ill, I would press my physical therapy and, as one might expect, I would overdo it and end up in a worse situation that I had been before.

I’ve been learning slowly to take each day as it comes. I can move forward but only at the pace that works and doesn’t hurt me (at least not that much!)

It’s funny but learning patience with the physical difficulties I have faced has spilt over into other areas of my life. I’ve learned to seek God in all things and to ask him when I should move forward more slowly or at a quicker pace.

Patience is a virtue and one that we should all strive for in our daily life. It isn’t intuitive, quite the reverse. It is difficult to learn and, once learned, even more difficult to hold onto.

While it is difficult, it is what we are to strive for. God wants us to be patient and to wait for his plan to unfold. This doesn’t mean sitting around and doing nothing. It means to do the work that God called us to do and to know that he is in control. We can’t control the outcome but we can, knowingly, do our part.

We have no need to rush things. There is no need to suffer anxiety. God’s plan will come to fruition at the exact right time in history.

Proverbs 14:29

Whoever is patient has great understanding,
but one who is quick-tempered displays folly.

It’s times like these, when the world seems to be falling apart, that Christians and others may ask, where is God in what is going on?

It seems like he has deserted us and is letting havoc reign. Nothing could be further from the truth.

God is right here. He is standing right beside each of us, whether we have given our lives to him or not.

He never promised that life would be easy. It was, before Adam and Eve sinned. Because of their sin, destruction entered into the entire creation.

God could have walked away. He could have destroyed everything and started over with something completely different.

Humans are frail and sin over and over and over again. Because of this, the world is going to be a place of grief and destruction.

What God has done, however, is not to walk away. Instead, he is walking right beside us. He will even carry his believers when they trust in him. Those who do not know and have a relationship with God are standing alone even though God is standing and waiting for them to reach out to him.

When Jesus, as God in human form, died and took the punishment for all sins ever committed in the past or in the future, he opened up and repaired what Adam and Eve had destroyed. He gave mankind the ability, once again, to have a direct relationship with God. When Jesus rose again from death, he gave mankind the hope of eternal life.

For those who believe in him, that hope is a surety.

For those who do not believe and trust in God, eternal death is waiting. The good news is that all you have to do is accept the gift that Jesus is giving to you, turn away from your sinful life and start living the life that Jesus has called you to.

Being a Christian does not make you perfect, it just means that you have a direct relationship with God. You will sin, probably many times over again. That is where the relationship with God is so important. You can ask for his help, through the Holy Spirit who lives in your heart, to give you strength to walk away from those sins and ask him directly for forgiveness.

Once you know God, you will find that he is always with you. It is true in bad times as well as good. He is always with you. You are not alone.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

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.

People’s lives are being upended. For many, they are having problems understanding what is going on. They feel lost and alone. They are searching for answers and meaning to why their safety and security is gone.

They are looking to the news and social media for answers. They are looking high and low. They are looking everywhere and anywhere in the world to get a solution to what is troubling them.

Looking at the world will never give them a good answer. There is nothing in this world that isn’t broken because of the sin of mankind.

There is really just one place to look for answers and that is to God. He created our universe perfect. We broke it by rebelling against him.

We are the ones who are responsible for all the brokenness, disease and troubles that we face. We are all guilty, every single one of us. Still, I feel most for the children. They are facing this crisis as well and have no idea what is going on.

They watch their parents, families and caregivers coming unglued and, sadly, are quite often taking the brunt of their anger. Domestic abuse is on the rise.

I don’t pretend to understand it. I was a victim of abuse, by my family, when I was a child. I know what it is like to have to hide from my mother or from my older brother. There is never an excuse good enough to make abusing your child, your spouse or an elder relation acceptable.

There are groups that are set up to help you. These groups are still working in this crisis. You can reach out to them by phone or internet.

Look for support groups. Your local churches will have individuals who can talk to you and provide help. Christians are ready. They will help you regardless of your religion or lack thereof.

This is happening to a wide range of individuals, including Christians. You should know that God doesn’t look kindly on those cowardly among us who hurt the weak and helpless. He does, however, forgive you when you repent of your sins and turn away from them. He can help you learn self-control but he has put into place people who can help you as well.

Don’t let the lack of security in life right now guide you into such acts of abuse. Look for help. If you are being abused or you know of someone who is being abused, don’t let fear of this virus keep you from reporting it. In times of stress violence escalates, it doesn’t diminish.

God is always there waiting. He wants to hear from you. He wants to fill your life with peace. I know from experience that knowing that God is control makes all the world of difference in stressful situations.

Let him show you his love and look to him for help.

Revelation 21:8

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars — they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.