five minute friday: forward

2019 crept in without much fan fare as we huddled close in the wake of the storm that had swept us into an unfamiliar town and a painful season of grief over the greatest loss we had felt to date. But 2019 brought healing in the form of a family vacation brimming with excitement, joy and bonding followed by the sweetest 20th anniversary trip to Jamaica we could have ever imagined. As the year closed with new traditions and remembrances, we could feel the healing that was being worked into the fabric of our lives.
Enter 2020. As my oldest celebrated big at The Passion Conference, we no sooner toasted the new year that we ran to the shore to make the first day count with the salt water spraying its foam confetti all around us. New hopes, fresh starts, a new decade ahead with such promise. What could go wrong?
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I'll spare you the rehashing of these last three months having not been what we expected. An understatement.
Even if you have been living under a rock, you certainly have felt the effects of this season. But where do we go from here. How do we possibly move forward?
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Abraham lived a life of forward going. He certainly had no idea things would work out as they did. He just trusted the One from whose hand it came. How could he trust so fully?
I think and overthink until I have successfully stirred my own anxious thoughts and grown my own false stories from those seeds. From that patch of weeds I then end up drawing others around me into second guessing too.

Did God really say..? How can you be so sure? What if...? Or what if...? 

Not Abraham. Hebrews 11:10 tells us "he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." He wasn't looking mourning the end of previous joys. He wasn't looking to Sarah for clarity. He wasn't even spending time, it seems, hemming and hawing over the pros and cons list. Nope. Hebrews 11:8 says, "by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going."

We don't yet know where we are going from here. We don't yet know the world we will live in as we step out of our homes from this shelter in place. But God does. The city Abraham's eyes were fixed on was not of this world. He was looking towards the City he was made for, the Celestial City, designed and built by God.  So can we. This world and all it's viruses, hornets, earthquakes, and fires will pass away. But the City God is preparing for those who are His is eternal. What if the story we told ourselves was True? What if we fixed our eyes on the City we are made for?

five minute friday: normal

How can there be a normal in the midst of an ever changing life? How can we find norm when everything keeps changing? These men-children keep growing and going. This man keeps graying, reminding me of my own roots. The bills ebb and flow and, by God's grace, the provision flows along with them.

In a season where all the world is pleading like beggars for normalcy, we are reminded there is no such thing.

Standing at the shore and watching the waves plummet the sand only to pull back again, I call to mind that normalcy of change. Maybe that in itself is our normalcy. Aren't we just fooling ourselves to think anything else will be the norm?

At that time, His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, "Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." This phrase, "Yet once more," indicates the removal of things that are shaken-- that is things that have been made-- in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:26-29

The shaking of this world, the lack of sameness in our lives, the constant upheavals and trials that consume us stand as proof that the only normalcy is change. We think "when things get back to normal" and then quickly feel the weight of that lack of real normal. Just because restaurants open, schools are in session and jobs feel secure does not guard us from the next trial, the next hurricane, the next diagnosis, the next virus.

Jesus alone is the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever. He stands in sharp contrast to our ever changing, ever shifting sandy soil. He alone is the stability of our times, the Prophet Isaiah points out (33:6).

So while we look for a return to normal, maybe what we really long for is a return to the one who is the Unchanging Stability we truly long for. Take hold of Him and He will not let go.