2020 was a difficult year. People were basically separated from each other by law and through fear…6’ apart, the same distance as the depth of a grave…interesting.
The social distancing has played emotional and physical havoc on nearly everyone.
Through fear people have self divided and tattled on others who were not following the rules as they interpreted them.
Yet Jesus walked among the lepers with no fear.
Many people, even God’s people are all down in the dumps and negative about this situation …certain it’s God’s hand of judgment and the end is near; they have lost hope and have succumbed to the negative talk of the world.
We are at a crossroads. We are in a crisis moment.
Is this the end of the world, are we going to eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die? Are we going to hunker down in our bunker waiting for it all to end, the crisis to be over, the virus to pass, avoiding people, doing nothing…only trying to stay safe?
I believe our mission is to seek to do good. God himself said overcome evil with good.
We are living in God’s world, the Bible says ‘this is my father’s world’, he made it, he made us, he made everything on the earth and he cares for it. It is his property and he has appointed us to be his stewards.
I believe we really need to be about our fathers business looking for and creating ways to do good to benefit and bless other people however we can using whatever creative ways/ideas God gives us. There are lives to be lived, children to be raised, babies to be born, work to be done… people with needs.
There may have been death to a lot of things this past year but somewhere there’s a verse that says ‘there is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again’.
I believe we need to infuse everyplace we go with God’s hope, life, peace, encouragement and good works.
I think of Nehemiah, he had a lot of destruction staring him in the face but he said ‘we will arise and build!’ Lots of people came against him telling him he was foolish, that his work would not last that who did he think he was…trying to discourage him and even destroy him for doing his good work. He was in a literal warfare, he and all his people as they began to build the walls to protect themselves while they defended themselves.
Are we going to allow this moment of crisis… this temporary moment of crisis… to hold us down, to push us back, or are we going to take the rubble in and around us and make/create something meaningful and beautiful to be a reminder that God is still in control.
I believe God is speaking to us and telling us to live!

This is a little longer than I normally write, but I’ve had a number of people ask me to post it so it could be shared. I wrote this on New Year’s Eve after talking to a friend who was discouraged about 2021.