INTRODUCTION to the series:
Several months ago – long before the Covid19 pandemic became the global focus of our lives – I surveyed newsletter recipients what topics they’d like to see me reflect on in my blogs. The answer (surprisingly to me) came back wanting to hear my reflections on life at age 66, now in my 50th year of following Jesus.
I started laying out a writing plan with topics and stories of lessons-learned… and then coronavirus changed life for all of us. In April, our team at DAI produced a month of devotional reflections built around our response to the pandemic. I was privileged to contribute a dozen of these reflections. Because my “blog” list and our DAI newsletter list has such little overlap, we decided I would run these again – starting Monday May 4th and appearing as a “reflection for the week” for the next twelve weeks.
My prayer is twofold – first, that these reflections will be an encouragement to your faith and second, that at some point over these twelve weeks they become irrelevant to Covid19 because a vaccination/cure will be discovered, and we will be on the road to recovery.
If you’d like to catch up on past reflections from this series you can do so here:
Three Words for Daily Living: Don’t Be Afraid
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God’s in Control (Even If I’m Clueless)
Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. Psalm 46:10
When we look to God to calm our fears amidst great turmoil, our faith in God’s sovereignty– i.e., that he is in control of everything – can be wonderfully reassuring and deeply troubling at the same time.
On the one hand, we feel assured that the sovereign Lord of the universe is with us and will carry us through the tough times. But on the other hand, we also ask, “Why does our sovereign Lord allow things like this pandemic and its many corresponding crises to occur? What is God doing?”
Perhaps you, like me, subscribe to many different newsletters and you’ve been deluged with news for weeks about the coronavirus – include Christians interpreting what God is doing. One day an email from a respected Christian leader popped up. The header read simply, “What God is Saying Through the Coronavirus.”
I opened it reluctantly thinking the writer was going to connect Covid19 to End Times prophecy or the Pale Rider of Revelation 6. Instead, the writer, a seasoned and wise Christian leader, wrote a brief exhortation: perhaps God is telling us to slow down, be quiet and listen. He was simply echoing Psalm 46:10.
The deluge of coronavirus news has diminished, but now we see our country in conflict, our African-American neighbors (and other ethnic minority groups) in pain over racial injustice, our nation splitting over partisan politics, and our minds boggled by the competing reports on the major news networks (reports that often contradict each other). How do we respond?
Amy Carmichael, missionary to India for more than 50 years, spent the last half of her years there directing her ministry as an invalid in a bed because of injuries sustained from a fall. Her biographers say that he had two framed pictures in her room. The first simply said “Be still” – a reminder of God’s sovereignty in the face of her own unanswered “why?” questions. The second said “I know” – a reminder that God knew his plans for her, even if she didn’t understand.
Facing these challenging times and wondering how to respond? God invites our first response as he says to us: “Be still… I know.”
Prayer: Dear Lord, thank you that you are sovereign. Thank you that you not only are in control of this moment but can see beyond to the bigger picture and your larger purposes. Please enable us to quiet our hearts before you and deepen our trust in you. Let this time of global turmoil be an opportunity to grow deeper in relationship with you. Amen.
Paul & Christie Borthwick serve with Development Associates International. If you are interested in learning more about DAI, visit www.daintl.org and click on “get email updates” (https://daintl.org/get-involved/
