Even Now

It’s been a long haul. As I write this it has been eleven months since the pandemic and all of its effects came to us on the reservation. When we gathered that Sunday in March we already knew that changes were coming and that we wouldn’t have worship the next few weeks. But we had no idea exactly what those changes would be, what effects would come with them, and how long it would all last. 

Lock down. Quarantine. Social distancing. Face mask. Hand sanitizer. Zoom. Temperature checks. YouTube worship. Curfew. Online schooling. Food distribution. FaceTime. Events postponed, and then cancelled.

These are among the things that have been a part of our everyday life for nearly a year. We long to go back to normal, although by now we know that whatever the new normal is that it won’t quite be the way things were before.

As Christians what we do know is that what we see is only part of the story. Unseen and unchanging is the truth that the Lord sits on His throne and will not be moved. The truth that He holds all things in His hands and will never let a single one of His children go. The truth that He works all things according to His purposes. The truth that for His children all things work for good.

That last one is often a real challenge as we live day-by-day. How can this much disruption to our lives be for good? Friends and family have become ill and died through the pandemic. How can that be for good? 

We want answers, but all we seem to get are more questions. Hard questions.

My current Bible reading has included both Genesis and Job. In each of those books there are complicated stories around hardship and suffering. There are people, Joseph and Job, who love God deeply and that love doesn’t change even when it seems as if their lives are falling apart. Both men come to see that the work of God in their struggles and suffering was for a purpose that was beyond their ability to understand at the time it was happening.

I don’t know for certain but I think that that we will find our experience to be similar. The pandemic is not what we want and as we have lived through it to this point things have rarely gone as we would have arranged them.  A vaccine has been developed and is becoming more available and yet we still have restrictions on our lives, and we don’t know how or when they will be removed.

In the presence of all the changes the pandemic has brought, difficulties that we just as easily could have done without, God has been working in us, as His children, shaping us for His purposes. This is what happens in the stories of Joseph and Job. God does powerful work in and through them, but in both cases it does not become clear to them until they are on the other side of their hardships. 

In a similar way it may be a long time until we see or understand the good things of God that have been going on in the pandemic. I suspect that some of those things won’t become clear to us until after our days here on earth are over and we are with the Lord Jesus in heaven.

God is good. God is faithful. His love never changes and there is never a moment when He is not with His children. Even now.