Count on one hand the wildest things you or your country has experienced over the past year.
Fourteen months ago, would you have guessed that any one of those experiences could possibly have occurred? Aside from perhaps in your “worst case scenario” daydreams, likely not.
My family has experienced some heartache this year too:
Thumb) My wife’s brother was killed by a drunk police officer at the tail end of 2019.
Index) The business into which we had invested so much time and energy was crushed by COVID and our quick departure from Asia.
Middle) The evacuation we thought might last a month has now lasted just about a year (with no end in sight).
Ring) We have traveled the country, house-hopping from one available location to the next with little sense of settlement.
Pinky) And just this past week, my wife’s father died on the island, and we’re unable to go back and comfort the family.
That’s my one-hand count, and it doesn’t even include the political/social turmoil that’s rocked our nation for months on end.
All week, we’ve received condolences for our loss from friends from across the world, and we’re grateful. It has given me time to ponder, opportunity to word my heart in response.
A friend who’s been taking care of a sick relative all year wrote me this morning with grief. She apologized for her own “self-absorption” in not having responded sooner, which is a silly way of describing her compassion!
I’d like to share the essence of my response to her. I hope it’s encouraging to you too.
When I get down about stuff and feel like we’re living in “unprecedented times” either physically or politically or sorrowfully, I just remind myself that “there’s nothing new under the sun.” Sickness happens. Death happens. Turmoil happens.
God has been in control since He created this world and watched his first human friends ruin it all. The relationship between that Awesome God and humanity may have been broken, but it wasn’t destroyed. God became active in this world’s redemption from the first instant. His Son achieved it at the cross, and He’ll complete it when He’s good and ready.
Like Job in trials we cannot understand, we have one grand and perfect option available to us: we simply need to trust and obey Him, come what may. The “unprecedented” nature of our times is that we’ve lived so long in peace and without earth-rattling difficulties to shake us.
Like Job again, we need to repent. We need to cling to our Advocate and Mediator. We need to know that our Redeemer lives. We need to say with full confidence in our Sovereign Savior: “Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him.”
I don’t know what your fingers are telling you today, but I encourage you to find comfort in the drama of Job. Read chapters 1-2 and chapters 37-42 this week. Trust in your God. Know that your Redeemer lives.
©2021 E.T.