Living Well
My guess is that you are feeling the pinch of another 3 weeks in this stay at home mode!! I know in the VM household the introverts have had just about enough of the extroverts and the extroverts are acting more like dogs than humans.
One of the things that I have heard is that we are living in unprecedented times.Of course that is not exactly true.As hard as this curtailing of freedom has been, I have been encouraged by folks like Richard Baxter, who, when he was asked in the mid 1600’s whether it was right for a magistrate to restrict worship, replied like this, "If the magistrate for a greater good, (as the common safety,) forbid church-assemblies in a time of pestilence, assault of enemies, or fire, or the like necessity, it is a duty to obey him.” They too faced pestilence and closure. What encourages me is that our world has been through this before, the church has been through this before, God knows and he will deliver us in His time!
In the meantime how shall we live? Once again I turn to church history, this time to Augustine. He was asked directly how shall we live in hard times? He replied thus, “People speak of hard times. Let us live well and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.” What he is saying is that we are not determined by what is outside of us, but rather what is inside. Surely something like Psalm 1 must be in his heart and mind. In Christ we are like trees planted by streams of water so that both in season and out of season we draw strength from Him. Let us draw strength from Him and times shall be good.
And what declares Augustine right more than Easter? The blessed day on which all of history turns. The day in which when we celebrate Christ’s victory over the grave. Tetelestai. It is finished!We know that neither COVID-19, social distancing, loneliness, economic hardship, nor another day in the house with that annoying extrovert can ever separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus.
Photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash