The More Things Change…

 

…the more they stay the same. Such is life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I started writing this post 6 days ago and had written just that first line before going onto work on a different project. I had an idea for a post, wrote the first line, and then planned to get back to it the next day. Little did I know how the next few hours would unfold.

After dinner that evening Robin and the kids spent some time outside, while I went off to take care of some pastor business. An hour later one of the boys called me on Robin’s phone, telling me that Kat had been hurt and that there was an ambulance at the house. I arrived home to see Kat laying in the yard while the ambulance crew tended to her. She had fallen about 6 feet and landed on her shoulder, neck and head.

The initial assessment looked pretty good but the ambulance crew consulted with their doctor and decided to transport her to the hospital in Farmington to make sure. The fire department sent over help to get Kat on the stretcher and into the ambulance. Robin went with Kat and I got the boys settled in to bed, laying out clothes and blankets should we need to go to the hospital in the night.

A bit after 10 PM I got the call that the CT scans and other tests were all negative and that the girls were ready to come home. I woke the boys, loaded the van, drove to Farmington to pick up Robin and Kat, drove home and helped get the boys back to bed, and then got onto bed myself just before 3 AM. Quite a day!

The picture is from our family’s worship last Sunday. It marked the 27^th Sunday this year that we have gathered around the computer instead of in the church next door. When all of the pandemic restrictions started last March I had no idea that they would still be in place over half the year later. And today, Tuesday afternoon, the first day of autumn, I don’t have any idea for how much longer they will continue.

Last week Kat’s fall was a close call for us, in terms of potentially major life changes. They could have been the kind of changes that I know well from my previous career in health care. She was spared and for that we are thankful. Worshipping around the computer is getting a bit old but I know that Robin and I were both glad for it this past Sunday, instead of any number of other ways things could have gone.

Sometimes things change and sometimes they don’t. The pandemic has been a big change but six months into it many of those changes are simply our new routines. One thing that hasn’t changed is the God who holds all things in his hands, all the time.

Powerful, good, holy, merciful, kind, righteous, just, wise, loving, trustworthy, reliable…you name whatever things about God are your favorites. Whatever they may be he is those things perfectly and constantly. Life has changed and it will change again. God remains the same, and that is a good and precious truth to hang on to.

 

 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.