Dear Church Family,
A couple of weeks ago I saw a picture of a woman who took a picture with her I-phone of a Starbucks cup while wearing a mask (and yoga pants I think). The caption asked, “How would you explain this to someone twenty years ago?” Imagine you somehow became a modern Rip Van Winkle. You wake up from your twenty-year sleep and see our world in this time of pandemic. What words would describe how you see people acting? (By the way Rip, forget trying to figure out what an I-Phone is. I have had one for six weeks now. All I can do is phone and text, just like I did for over 17 years with my faithful flip phone. O never mind, you don’t know what a flip phone is either.)
My guess is you would use terms like angry, antsy, anxious, bored, bothered, etc. and you have just used the first two letters of the alphabet. Then you think of the Teacher whom the book of Ecclesiastes quotes. In verse eight of the first chapter he observes and you might today, “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing or the ear its fill of hearing.”
Here again, the genius of the Bible shines brightly. Follow the inspired thoughts given in this one verse and apply it to today. We can say that fatigue plagues fallen man. The many troubles of the past six months (and still going) wear just about everyone out. Several times in the Psalms the cry goes up, “How long, O Lord?” If you have felt that way, you have much company. Then we see on TV or social media (which I encourage you to limit) or hear in various ways the bad news of spikes in the number of positive Covid tests, unrest in the streets, etc. After six plus months we yearn for, as the next verse says, “something new.”
Yet instead of something new, we need to remember the great truths of the Bible that remain true even if you have taken a nap for twenty years. God controls all things and works all things for His glory. Those eleven words should cure the discontent any one of God’s people might feel. A. W. Tozer wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Discontent ebbs like the outgoing tide when we live by faith in the sovereign care of God. We need big thoughts of our infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present and loving God.
We do not deny that life has taken on a weird vibe. We can admit a certain frustration with life as normalcy fades in the memory. We have to adapt to a new way of life with masks, social distancing, wipes and visiting people on the other side of a window. Yet God reigns supreme and as His adopted children, we rest in His fatherly care.
Jeremiah Burroughs, a Puritan pastor from the early 1600s, wrote a book with a title that summarizes its message named “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.” He defines this rare jewel as “that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.” Rather than being seen as “angry, antsy, anxious, bored, bothered, etc.,” may we live lives marked by that jewel!
Living by grace to His glory,
Pastor Gillikin