It’s April 2020. This past Saturday I normally would have been babysitting our granddaughter while our oldest worked. Our middle daughter would have been recovering from a late night after her MSU State Singers Spring Concert on Friday and our youngest would have taken the ACT after sleeping in the car on our way home from Starkville. Yet, here in these days of Corona we have now entered our Alabama order of “shelter-in-place.” I shake my head, literally, shake my head, as I consider the days we are in.
However these are not new or unheard of days. We can look through history and see that we have been here before. The difference today is that technology and travel have opened this up to where it is seen and experienced almost everywhere. We have opinions and social media “specialist” sharing their opinions and “expertise” constantly… and really we don’t know who to believe. We really don’t know how bad it is, if it is even really that bad at all. We do not know. I know at least that I do not know.
I just know that I am not afraid. I am not stressed. I am not panicked. I am not worried. The funny thing is that my husband and I have asked each other if it’s not normal that we are not freaking out, because apparently we are supposed to be stressed, depressed, and wringing our hands in mental anguish. Please know that I am not shaming anyone if this is where you are and these are the emotions you are facing. It’s not that I have not walked through them all… it’s that I have and I, we, know that God’s grace is sufficient.
We have experienced seasons of financial loss and strain… God’s grace was sufficient.
We have experienced seasons of sickness and death… God’s grace was sufficient.
We have experienced seasons of unknowns, doubts, and fear… God’s grace was sufficient.
It has been the lessons learned in our past that are granting us this peace in our present. We have come to fully grasp that this world is not our home. This world is a season full of seasons. This world is high school and the real world comes after graduation. This world is prep work, it’s practice for the big game. This world is the try-outs to see what position we earn on the field. This world is the warm-up before the big show. This world is the little we have been entrusted with to see if we will be faithful and can one day be entrusted with much.
Houses crumble. Cars break down. Stuff gets outdated. Jobs change and sometimes end. Bodies die. The soul, however, of a human being created in the image of God, is forever.
I am currently watching “Call the Midwife” on Netflix. It is my latest binge worthy series. In one of the episodes, one of the Nuns made the statement, “I have come to learn that there are only two reasons that anyone does anything, one is love the other is fear.”
In these days of Corona, why will you do what you do? Why will you put on mask? Why will you go to the store? Why will you quarantine? Why will you pray? Why will you not? What will be the motivating factor behind the choices you make?
Will the driving force in your life be one of love?
Or will it be one of fear?
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.(1 John 4:15-19)