God Alongside Us
Over the course of a normal month, Nicole and I might take our family out to eat, maybe 2 or 3 times. It’s something we like to do, that we usually do fairly regularly, and we’ve never thought much of it.
Over the course of the past few weeks, though, we haven’t gone out to eat, of course. But we’ve ordered in from restaurants in our town, probably 9 or 10 times at this point. Far more often than we usually do.
Since our state, along with many others, has gone into physical distancing, the nights out, the quick trips to the store, and the family meal at the local diner are no longer possible.
And you remember what it was like, when you’d go anywhere really, and you’d give a restaurant your business, and at the end of the night, your server or the host or maybe a manager if they happened to see you on your way out, would give you a passing, “thanks, come again.”
In recent weeks, those cursory, polite “thank you’s” have suddenly become a lot more earnest.
We order take out more than we used to, not because we particularly want to eat pizza or fried chicken, or Portuguese BBQ all the time. But because a lot of our favorite places are hurting right now. And we don’t know how long this pandemic will last. Or how long until it will be safe to gather again. And it may come in waves, where we have to keep distance for a few months, then relax for a month or two, then go back to keeping distance again, until more effective treatments can be found or a vaccine developed.
But however long it takes, we’re getting takeout, giving as much business as we can, because we want those places to still be around when our world gets back to normal.
We all crave normalcy. I think we’re all desperate for our lives to regain some resemblance of predictability.
I was on a call with about 3 dozen other ministers from our Classis earlier this week, and we were talking about the effect that this societal shutdown has had on our churches, as well as on our own mental well-being. And we have some real extroverts among our ministers – men and women who love to be out there among people, shaking hands, hugging, being a part of the crowd. And all of sudden, they’re in isolation along with everyone else, and it’s a major stressor for them.
My personality is much more on the introverted side of the spectrum. And so, on one level, the social distance is probably a lot easier for me than it is for others. I have no problem staying in, keeping to myself, finding my entertainments at home with just my family.
Yet all of us are constantly, fully aware, that this distance that we have to keep isn’t just some social experiment. We’re not doing this because someone thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if everyone stayed home for a month?”
We’re doing this because we’re fully aware that people are dying. That our world is hurting. And that the most helpful thing we can do, to help the doctors and nurses on the front lines of this disaster, is to not add to their number of patients.
So while the temptation might be there to treat this whole thing as a teaching moment, or a Sabbath exercise, or as a chance to reconnect with our families and the people we love… and it certainly can be those things… we’re all fundamentally aware that the reason that we have this chance to step back is because the world is in pain. So even for the most introverted among, for those of us who would normally relish the chance to stay home for days and weeks on end – even for us, there is no joy to be found, because our hearts are constantly breaking.
These are stressful times with an invisible enemy. We’re only 2 weeks in to these isolating measures, and we don’t know how many more weeks are ahead of us.
Even if we’re all able to stay physically healthy, this time will cause many of us to have emotional and spiritual distress.
We may fear every time a loved one walks out the door to go to work, if they’ll be the next one coming home with a fever.
Some people may be quarantined in total isolation, without any family for support. And we’ve seen calls to suicide hotlines spike in the past few weeks as people grapple with depression and the effects of isolation.
Some people may be trapped in their homes with family members who abuse them or their children, in escalating cycles of violence.
And even if your situation is ideal – where you can work from home, you have enough food that you don’t need to make unnecessary trips – you have a loving and supportive family around you – even in the best of circumstances, simply knowing what’s going on in the world today, with the numbers of sick rising, with the number of dead in the tens of thousands, with doctors and nurses struggling to do their jobs without adequate supplies – knowing all that can make even the strongest of us weep.
The world is in a painful place.
And even as children of God – as people of hope – as believers in Jesus Christ and the resurrection – we live in that pain as much as anyone else.
When Jesus went to Bethany to find the body of his friend, Lazarus, he knew that everything would eventually turn out ok. That Lazarus would walk again. He knew that a resemblance of normalcy would return to that household.
But that didn’t negate the pain of the moment. That didn’t stop Jesus from seeing the reality of his friend’s body, and weeping for him.
As Christians, we are allowed – encouraged – invited – to share in the pain of the world. Faith in God doesn’t mean that we put our heads in the sand, or that we simply pray all the pain away. But that we acknowledge and embrace the mourning of the world, and join in that mourning.
We know that we are in dark times. And that our days are likely to get worse before they get better.
Yet we also know that they will get better. That there will be days in our future when we look back on this time as a bad dream, and it will feel surreal to know that we endured such things.
That doesn’t take away from the pain and grief of our present moment. Just because we know that this will all pass in the future, doesn’t mean we don’t feel it deeply in our present.
So if you are anxious, or scared, or worried for the state of the world - If you work in a hospital or a grocery store or someplace where you are exposed, or have a friend or a family member you worry about – Those worries are perfectly rational. Perfectly normal. Perfectly human.
Trusting in God has never been about waving a magic wand and making all of our worries and pains disappear. God himself in Jesus Christ lived in those pains and suffered deeply alongside us.
Instead, we trust in God that the darkness will pass and that his light will overcome it. And that God’s love will carry us through until the bright tomorrow comes.
This is not the first or worst trial that God’s creation has suffered. God has been with us through greater darknesses even than this. God sees our grief. God weeps with us. And God will see us through to the other side.
Please pray with me.
Holy and loving Father, we pray in thanksgiving for your mighty blessings and tender mercies. We pray for the sake of an anxious and hurting world. We pray for the people who suffer, the people who grieve, the people who put themselves in harm’s way, and all people struggling to cope. Lord, we pray for your strength, your comfort, and your healing for all people. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen
Over the course of a normal month, Nicole and I might take our family out to eat, maybe 2 or 3 times. It’s something we like to do, that we usually do fairly regularly, and we’ve never thought much of it.
Over the course of the past few weeks, though, we haven’t gone out to eat, of course. But we’ve ordered in from restaurants in our town, probably 9 or 10 times at this point. Far more often than we usually do.
Since our state, along with many others, has gone into physical distancing, the nights out, the quick trips to the store, and the family meal at the local diner are no longer possible.
And you remember what it was like, when you’d go anywhere really, and you’d give a restaurant your business, and at the end of the night, your server or the host or maybe a manager if they happened to see you on your way out, would give you a passing, “thanks, come again.”
In recent weeks, those cursory, polite “thank you’s” have suddenly become a lot more earnest.
We order take out more than we used to, not because we particularly want to eat pizza or fried chicken, or Portuguese BBQ all the time. But because a lot of our favorite places are hurting right now. And we don’t know how long this pandemic will last. Or how long until it will be safe to gather again. And it may come in waves, where we have to keep distance for a few months, then relax for a month or two, then go back to keeping distance again, until more effective treatments can be found or a vaccine developed.
But however long it takes, we’re getting takeout, giving as much business as we can, because we want those places to still be around when our world gets back to normal.
We all crave normalcy. I think we’re all desperate for our lives to regain some resemblance of predictability.
I was on a call with about 3 dozen other ministers from our Classis earlier this week, and we were talking about the effect that this societal shutdown has had on our churches, as well as on our own mental well-being. And we have some real extroverts among our ministers – men and women who love to be out there among people, shaking hands, hugging, being a part of the crowd. And all of sudden, they’re in isolation along with everyone else, and it’s a major stressor for them.
My personality is much more on the introverted side of the spectrum. And so, on one level, the social distance is probably a lot easier for me than it is for others. I have no problem staying in, keeping to myself, finding my entertainments at home with just my family.
Yet all of us are constantly, fully aware, that this distance that we have to keep isn’t just some social experiment. We’re not doing this because someone thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if everyone stayed home for a month?”
We’re doing this because we’re fully aware that people are dying. That our world is hurting. And that the most helpful thing we can do, to help the doctors and nurses on the front lines of this disaster, is to not add to their number of patients.
So while the temptation might be there to treat this whole thing as a teaching moment, or a Sabbath exercise, or as a chance to reconnect with our families and the people we love… and it certainly can be those things… we’re all fundamentally aware that the reason that we have this chance to step back is because the world is in pain. So even for the most introverted among, for those of us who would normally relish the chance to stay home for days and weeks on end – even for us, there is no joy to be found, because our hearts are constantly breaking.
These are stressful times with an invisible enemy. We’re only 2 weeks in to these isolating measures, and we don’t know how many more weeks are ahead of us.
Even if we’re all able to stay physically healthy, this time will cause many of us to have emotional and spiritual distress.
We may fear every time a loved one walks out the door to go to work, if they’ll be the next one coming home with a fever.
Some people may be quarantined in total isolation, without any family for support. And we’ve seen calls to suicide hotlines spike in the past few weeks as people grapple with depression and the effects of isolation.
Some people may be trapped in their homes with family members who abuse them or their children, in escalating cycles of violence.
And even if your situation is ideal – where you can work from home, you have enough food that you don’t need to make unnecessary trips – you have a loving and supportive family around you – even in the best of circumstances, simply knowing what’s going on in the world today, with the numbers of sick rising, with the number of dead in the tens of thousands, with doctors and nurses struggling to do their jobs without adequate supplies – knowing all that can make even the strongest of us weep.
The world is in a painful place.
And even as children of God – as people of hope – as believers in Jesus Christ and the resurrection – we live in that pain as much as anyone else.
When Jesus went to Bethany to find the body of his friend, Lazarus, he knew that everything would eventually turn out ok. That Lazarus would walk again. He knew that a resemblance of normalcy would return to that household.
But that didn’t negate the pain of the moment. That didn’t stop Jesus from seeing the reality of his friend’s body, and weeping for him.
As Christians, we are allowed – encouraged – invited – to share in the pain of the world. Faith in God doesn’t mean that we put our heads in the sand, or that we simply pray all the pain away. But that we acknowledge and embrace the mourning of the world, and join in that mourning.
We know that we are in dark times. And that our days are likely to get worse before they get better.
Yet we also know that they will get better. That there will be days in our future when we look back on this time as a bad dream, and it will feel surreal to know that we endured such things.
That doesn’t take away from the pain and grief of our present moment. Just because we know that this will all pass in the future, doesn’t mean we don’t feel it deeply in our present.
So if you are anxious, or scared, or worried for the state of the world - If you work in a hospital or a grocery store or someplace where you are exposed, or have a friend or a family member you worry about – Those worries are perfectly rational. Perfectly normal. Perfectly human.
Trusting in God has never been about waving a magic wand and making all of our worries and pains disappear. God himself in Jesus Christ lived in those pains and suffered deeply alongside us.
Instead, we trust in God that the darkness will pass and that his light will overcome it. And that God’s love will carry us through until the bright tomorrow comes.
This is not the first or worst trial that God’s creation has suffered. God has been with us through greater darknesses even than this. God sees our grief. God weeps with us. And God will see us through to the other side.
Please pray with me.
Holy and loving Father, we pray in thanksgiving for your mighty blessings and tender mercies. We pray for the sake of an anxious and hurting world. We pray for the people who suffer, the people who grieve, the people who put themselves in harm’s way, and all people struggling to cope. Lord, we pray for your strength, your comfort, and your healing for all people. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen