If you’re starting to struggle, you’re not alone. I’ve been grappling this week with feeling sad at the ministries and gatherings that have dropped away because they can’t meet, and trying to summon up the energy to make some calls to colleagues because I would naturally default to working on my own. But even if the last few weeks has granted you the novelty of a different experience of what a week might look like, I suspect I’m not alone in wanting things to hurry up in a return to “normal”.
But I was reflecting on the bigger picture of our human history, and the epochs of kingdoms and technology, and the rise of fall of empires, countries, and leaders. When we read the Bible, God is speaking to us today using texts of history and letters and poems and prophecy that were all written 2000 and more years ago. Just which country, which culture, and which time period do we think is God’s “normal”, particular when it all changes regularly?
Aisha Ahmad is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto, and wrote an insightful article that speaks into how we adjust to a crisis like this pandemic. She writes with a background of understanding how people respond to war, violent conflict, poverty, and disaster.
In 2 Kings 19:15, Hezekiah prays,
“LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.”
The “normal” that we all remember that we lived in a few weeks ago, was just as transient as any kingdom that has existed on this earth. Those other kingdoms rose and fell, and people found their normal was rewritten and changed to a new one. For us in serving our churches, maybe we need to let go of thinking that all of this will be over soon and it will all go back to what it was - it won’t.
Life ahead of us is not going to be the same as when we entered 2020. We are closer to Jesus’ return, facing different economic realities, shifts in power, and waking up to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are currently crying out to God for mercy, rescue, and turning to on-line church services, telephone chaplaincy and calling churches for help.
What if God needed to remind us that the life we were living never was “normal”? He alone is God over all the kingdoms of the earth, and needs to move us on closer to being His kingdom.
Stay safe, stay serving, stay fruitful. May God bless you and your church during this season.
Julian Mander
Executive Director, UCAN on behalf of the UCAN team.