A NEW YEAR
2020 is finally over! While the coronavirus lingers and so many remain at risk, there is hope for recovery with implementing the new vaccines. We hope and pray that spring will bring some return to normalcy.
2020 has been a year for the ages. So many have suffered, so many have died. As I write, friends can’t be with their children or parents in the hospital because of this tragic disease. Others mourn the loss of those who have passed. Many are unable to leave their homes because of underlying medical conditions. Many are without jobs and income as the virus has taken a devastating financial toll. 2020 has been a challenging year.
Although 2020 has been so difficult, it has made us recognize those things that we genuinely value. Adversity has a way of prioritizing life, even making us grateful for what we have. One of the best quotes I heard recently is, “I began 2020 thinking about all the things I wanted; I end 2020 being thankful for all the things I have.” 2020 has brought into focus what is important about life, about being human. Here are some things I have realized:
People are the real treasure in life. What I have missed the most is just being around people. One of the most tragic results of the pandemic is that we have become isolated and alone. We don’t function well (either individually or as a society) isolated and alone. It is as if we were “made” to be in community.
We are limited creatures. Life is so fragile. 2020 has made us all realize we are not immortal. Death is inevitable; we can’t escape it. So how do we deal with that? Although in one sense, this realization is liberating (“Seize the day!”), in another sense, we know death is so wrong. Our modern, secular world still has no answer for death. A vaccine is great, but what we really need is a resurrection!
Life is a Gift. The realization that we are limited creatures helps me realize that every breath I take is a gift. Life is all grace. Realizing that creates a sense of joy and gratitude. This leads me to the next realization…
Life is better lived at a slower pace. Life is meant to be enjoyed and savored. This cannot be done at our modern breakneck speed. One blessing of 2020 has been to slow us down, to take time to enjoy and relish the people that we can be with, to take walks, to be thankful for every breath we have. Sometimes you just have to slow down to listen.
SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO SLOW DOWN TO LISTEN
I also realized that these things, things all of us long for, are gifts the God of the Bible has been offering us all along. The God of the Bible wants to make us fully human, free from fear of death and free to live fully. We find our true selves when we come home to the God who created us, or, as Augustine said, “Our restless souls only find rest in You.” The adversity of 2020 can wake us up so that we live 2021 a little differently, slowing down to listen, to listen and realize that those things we long for find their fulfillment in Him.
People are the real treasure in life. People are so important because we are made in the image of God, and there is nothing impersonal about God. God is not an abstract thought, idea, or force. As Eugene Peterson notes, “God is totally personal, interpersonal, relational, giving and receiving, loving and directing.”[1] As Karl Barth said, we cannot think of the God of the Bible as “Something up there where humans are not present.” The God of the Bible is Emmanuel, God “with us.” The true God does not want to be, and will not be, without humans. The true God has gone to the greatest lengths to connect with each of us personally, to lovingly change all our failures, to provide new hope in this life and forever. The true God humbly stoops to lift us humans up, to even “exalt” us in honor. We are not exalted to be “gods” or take the place of the true God. That has gotten us into the trouble we see all around us. But God in love exalts us to be beside Him in true fellowship with Him, and beside and with each other. As Paul said,
God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)
Because God loves each human so much, we likewise must treat every person with the utmost dignity and respect, especially the vulnerable. The basis for “justice” in any society is the love of God, which commands us to have compassion for the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant (Deut. 10:18). Or, as Jesus said, when we have compassion on “the least,” we are having compassion on Him (Matthew 25:40). And God has called us to be together, in a community of love which he calls his “body,” growing in love and friendship together as God’s Spirit knits us together in love.
We are limited creatures, but death is not the end. Ted Peters notes, “Death is the door that God slams shut on evil and suffering within creation.”[2] But God’s love will not let death separate us from Him. God is not powerless over death–He gave us life in the first place. Just as God is the God of life, creation and love, He is the God of a new creation Who is faithful in keeping His promises. Jesus assured us, both in word and by his resurrection from the dead, that God is not the God of the dead but of the living (Matt. 22:32). “The good news of Jesus counters the deep fear of death in our society…For death, as life, is in God’s hands. And we are safe.”[3]
Life is a gift to be lived and enjoyed slowly. God has given us time to open our hearts to Him. That nudge in your heart is His invitation to know Him more deeply and be known more deeply by Him, to experience His love and peace, to listen to Him because He knows how life should be lived. Jesus said, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). Paul prayed that we would all be “rooted” in God’s love, and by being rooted in God’s love we would have “power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18, 19). Being rooted in God’s love allows us to stop living frantically and anxiously, to slow down and appreciate life and enjoy loving others. A gift God gives us to do this is Sabbath. Sabbath is time off the treadmill that fosters an attitude of living life from the center, not from our frayed edges. Although Christians enjoy the Sabbath on Sunday (which affirms that Jesus is Lord over death and this life), it is still a day of Sabbath rest. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that Sabbath is one of the most relevant gifts of God in our time, an act of both resistance and alternative.[4] As Brueggemann writes, Sabbath “provides time, space, energy, and imagination for coming to the ultimate recognition that [things] finally do not satisfy. Sabbath is an arena in which to recognize that we live by gift and not by possession, that we are satisfied by relationships of attentive fidelity and not by amassing commodities.”[5]
Happy 2021! I pray that in this new year God will put a “new song” in your heart:
I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,
and he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God. (Psalm 40:1-3)
[1] Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Eerdmans, 2005), 304.
[2] Ted Peters, God–The World’s Future (Fortress Press, 2000), 322.
[3] Walter Brueggemann, A Gospel of Hope (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2018), 30.
[4] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now ((Westminster: John Knox Press, 2014), xiii.
[5] Id, 85.