It started on March 13, 2020.The 187th day of my 9 months Bible Reading Challenge #KeeptheFeast
March 13 already didn't start out as such a great day.
I guess it was a Friday.
It also turned out to be the last day we went to our fav Brewery for our usual Friday night date night.
For now, anyways.
It happened to be the weekend church was cancelled for the first time, on account of social distancing, gatherings over 100 people were discouraged ( not quite forbidden but frowned upon for sure.)
I had read through Job before.
I had studied and been greatly encouraged by some passages in Job.
I like quoting verses from Job whenever I talk about my most favourite subject : God's Sovereignty.
So on March 13, when the Bible Reading Challenge plan had me starting to read through Job I first didn't think about it too much.
On day 2 of this undertaking I remember thinking : I don't really want to read this....
I know how it ends, I know the lessons it's teaching, I don't really want to read every little detail of all the heartache, well meaning friends inflicting pain and all that...
I didn't want to have to walk through the muck and yuck of living through heart wrenching suffering for the unforeseeable future of my daily reading...
Right there it dawned on me, that as much as I would like to fast forward through the daily grind of reading this, that's just not what it is.
That's not what life is.
That's not what walking with the Lord is about.
Yes, we know the outcome.
Yes, we know the final destination and the eternal joy that awaits us.
But here, in this life we have been given to live we have to walk through the daily muck, the daily disappointments, the tough stuff, the fear and the anxiety...
Our Father in Heaven, in His loving and purposeful providence has us trudging through the mud of daily living for a very good reason.
As we have to make our way through the hard stuff we find out that we only can do this as we are leaning more and more into Him.
Looking to Him every time we try and lift one foot out of the miry clay to make another step.
Relying on Him and humbly admitting our dependence on Him, every second of every day....
Many things have drastically changed since March 13.
Today we are under a "Shelter in place" order.
Church on Sunday was a live-streamed event on Facebook, Small group happened via Zoom and many, many new and fearful tidbits of information are assaulting each of us the moment we pick up our phones or turn on our computers or TVs.
Schools are closed and parents have been laid off or are working from home.
Fears of many people dying from this horrible virus and the economy crashing, people losing their livelihoods, are on everyone's mind....
To say all of this is unsettling doesn't quite describe the scope of this.
Today, as prescribed by my plan, I finished reading Job.
Like I said, no surprises, I knew the outcome.
I knew the lessons that are there to learn.
God, He alone is God, He deserves all the glory.
No one and nothing can thwart His plans.
In our suffering, God ordained or permitted by God, God is teaching us about Himself and is refining us, turning the heat up and bringing our sin, our pride, our self -reliance to the surface and skimming it off, making us more like Him.
God faithfully reveals Himself to us, He also shows us what we really believe about Him.
He exposes false beliefs we might have about him, our righteousness and the sin in our lives.
In the end He fully restores Job, makes him even richer than before and blesses him with a new family.
But...and that's what I never want to skip over... in it all, even though God restores him, he still walks out his life with the pain of the losses he sustained through all this.
Somewhere in there then, the fact that he encountered and had it out with God so to speak, must have changed his perspective... somehow by living through the suffering and loss he must have grown in his faith and closeness with God.
I find comfort in that.
Not only did God hear Job, never leave him and answer him, He didn't waste the pain and the hurt Job was going through.
So what does this all have in common with COVID-19?
We don't know what tomorrow holds, we have no control over it.
But of one thing we can be sure :
God is not wasting one second of this for those who love Him.
Those who rather than looking horizontally and responding with fear and panic choose ( and sometimes that very tough to do, and only He can make it happen ) to fix our eyes on Him.
Open our fists that want to hold on to what we want life to be like, and surrender it all to Him.
Trusting Him, keeping our hands open, palms up, ( sometimes that takes a lot out of us, but by His strength we can ) allowing Him to have His way in us.
Like He had in Job.
The outcome is known.
Nothing can separate us from His love.
Not even a pandemic.
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