I know it’s difficult to think long-range in the middle of a crisis that requires hourly updates and minute-by-minute adjustments to plans. But let’s try for just a moment.
Choose a date somewhere further than six months from now - is it Thanksgiving? Christmas? New Years Eve? Perhaps a big birthday coming up. See yourself there surrounded by your people. Imagine your conversation and activities, the food, the smells, the laughter and the tears. What are your hopes for that moment?
In the summer of 2017 our nation experienced a solar eclipse… A co-worker managed to get a few pair of the special glasses required to look at the sun as the moon covered it over - it was fascinating. The thing I remember most about that day, though, is the coming together in awe and wonder - people all over the nation - experiencing and living though a natural phenomenon that dazzled us…
And now, the COVID-19 reality has finally sunk in to our collective consciousness - forcing us to come to terms with significant disruption and serious individual responsibility. It struck me how the same sense from the eclipse, that feeling of “it’s happening to all of us” is true, although in this case, it is not good.
Two funny things happened to me recently. They aren’t related in any way to each other except for the way they make me laugh at myself. Then I realized one other connection this morning.
Read MoreMy daily reading schedule had me in the story of Jacob recently. It takes place in the book of Genesis, chapter 32. Jacob-becoming-Israel because he wrestled with God. The narrative doesn’t exactly explain why Jacob’s night of prayer became hand-to-hand combat. But it seems to be a special mercy that God bestowed upon him. The result was a changed man with a new name who forever after walked with a limp. His very character transformed into a humbler and wiser presence that day.
I tend to wrestle with ideas or situations - like pondering hope for addiction, aching to see transformed lives, our culture’s battles with racism, injustice, patriarchy, oppression of women and children, longing for community integration and impact, and observing ways that the Christian church intersects and interacts with these issues. I tend to wrestle with myself - like training my mind to think new thoughts, overcome self-doubt and break unhealthy patterns. I believe in - and practice - holding these concerns prayerfully before God even as I wrestle with them.
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